Hide and Seek
by A Dreamweaver
Summary: Alone in Rome after Spike's death in the Hellmouth, Buffy finally realizes what he meant to her.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

_'I love you,'_ she had said as the sunfire burned through him and he blazed with light. Knowing that he was dying and wanting to give him something in return for the death. At least those words that he had always wanted from her and which cost her nothing to say now.

But he had known she was lying. _'No, you don't, but thanks for saying it.'_

And then the cavern was crashing down around her and she had left him there as she ran. Up through the Seal and through the toppling corridors of the high school as the sunfire consuming and exploding from Spike destroyed the Hellmouth and shook the ground under her. Flinging herself towards the bus as Giles and the girls screamed at her to hurry because the town was collapsing under them.

The bus had made it, screeching past the boundaries of the town just as Sunnydale folded into itself behind them. They had stopped then on solid ground and gotten out and stared with awe at the vast, vast crater that was now stood where the town had been. Hellmouth gone. Sunnydale gone. Nothing left but rocks and rubble and ruin. Nothing at all.

Buffy had looked at it and smiled. Thinking only that she was free now. Free of the Hellmouth. Free of Sunnydale. Free to go where she wanted, do what she wanted, the whole world opening up before her.

Not thinking of Spike or that his life had been the price of her freedom.

Others had died too. The battle with the First Evil had taken a toll. Some of the Potentials, Amanda for one, quiet and plain and so courageous, whom she had liked. Anya. She heard Andrew saying that Anya had saved his life and Xander joking about how she always did the stupid thing, his tone light and careless.

But he was unusually quiet on the ride to L.A. They were all chattering about silly things by then, about going to the mall and where they were going to stay now and the existence of the other hellmouth in Cleveland. There were wounded to see to and plans to be made. Giles—as one of the few, perhaps the only remaining member of the Council of Watchers—was saying that the Council's bank accounts had certainly not been blown up and that Angel would find a place for them to stay while Giles looked into getting access to them. They had survived and they had a future. The whole world did, now that the First was defeated. They had won and they were all looking forward rather than back.

Reaction to all the danger and stress that they had endured? Perhaps. Shutting it all out, the terror they had lived with so long and didn't want to think about any longer. But later—much later—Buffy realized that anyone overhearing them would have thought they sounded callous and unfeeling. She certainly had been, thinking only about her freedom and not about the cost.

Angel's Hyperion Hotel provided them with a place to stay while they figured out what to do next. In the weeks that followed, they found out that Willow's spell activating the Slayer inside the Potentials had had unexpected consequences. It had not only given the Potentials there in Sunnydale the power to keep themselves alive against the Turok-Han, but had awakened all the potential Slayers everywhere in the world. There were almost eighteen hundred of them, Giles estimated, and they had to be contacted and told what they were and taught how to handle these new abilities they found rising within them.

It was decided that England, where the Council used to be, was the best place for a central base. The Council's funds and properties were there and Giles would also be able to make use of the Council's contacts. Giles went ahead to establish Slayer headquarters there. Willow's new abilities as a witch helped track down the newly activated Slayers in the States, and Buffy and the SunnyD Slayers fanned out to gather them in at the Hyperion in preparation for the move to England.

Those months should have been exciting. Seeing all those places Buffy had never been able to visit before—New York, Miami, Washington, Boston, Houston, all the rest. And later there would be all those other far more exotic places that Giles was certain to send her out to—London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo. The whole world lay open at her feet and yet she felt oddly flat. It was no fun exploring on her own. Well, occasionally one of the full-Slayers would be with her, but it was not the same as having someone special with her. Angel would have come if she had asked him, but strangely she didn't want Angel.

"Come on, B," said Faith. She and Robin Wood, now recovered from his wounds, had decided that they wouldn't go to England with the rest of them, but would stay in the States and keep an eye on the Cleveland hellmouth. "No more FEs and crap to worry about anymore. Let's go have some fun."

So she and Faith and a lot of the SunnyD Slayers went clubbing and danced the night away.

"Nice buns on that one," remarked Faith as the guy Buffy had been dancing with went off to get them both a drink. "Nice bulge in the front of those jeans too. He the one you gonna take home?"

"Haven't decided yet," shrugged Buffy. She had danced wildly with several partners. "I'm still playing the field. You?"

"The hottie down at the end of the bar there, I think." She waved at the hottie who gave her back a hopeful and eager smirk.

Buffy giggled, then caught herself up. "I think I've had too much to drink."

"Gotta learn to loosen up, B. And hold your likker. You haven't any capacity at all. I've had three times as much as you and I'm still five by five."

"What the hell does that mean?" she had asked Spike once and he had laughed.

"Five by five? Really old radio slang for the strength and clarity of a signal. Each on a scale of one to five, so five by five stands for perfect. God knows where she picked it up. I think it goes back to WWII."

She could still see the vivid blue of his eyes and that flash of bright laughter that had come so rarely in him that last year. Because of the soul? Because of her? The memory sobered her and she went home alone. She didn't know why. But somehow some mindless, meaningless fuck with someone she picked up at a bar suddenly felt wrong. Had she rejected all of Spike's love and devotion, held him off so determinedly, only to screw some hunk she didn't know or care about? What kind of horrendous betrayal would that be? Of her ostensible principles. Of Spike.

Because he really had loved her. It wasn't just obsession as she had so unrelentingly insisted. He had proved that when he had died for her in the Hellmouth.

She had wanted to think about it as obsession. Wanted to think about him as nothing but a vamp and soulless and evil. She had used him that time when she hadn't been able to feel anything after Willow had resurrected her. 'Make me feel,' she had said, needing sensations that would bring her back to the world, bind her to it. And then when he had, she had hated him for making her feel, for making love to her while she just fucked him, for forcing her to live when all she really wanted was to die and return to that peace of the Heaven she had been dragged from.

Punished him for doing only what she had asked, flayed him with her scorn and her hatred, physically abused him with blows that he had never resisted which had left marks still there a week later even on a swiftly healing vampire.

Even breaking off that destructive relationship had been selfish. 'It's killing me,' she had said. But what had it been doing to him? But she had never bothered to think of that. Even the time he had tried to force himself upon her was something she had driven him to, with her blindness and her lack of empathy, not seeing his pain and desolation, seeing it only as a try at rape, rather than a last disastrous attempt by him to somehow make contact. She had never forgiven him for that, even after he had gone and gotten his soul in his horror at himself, after coming back to his senses.

So that he would never hurt her like that again. But she had never valued that magnificent achievement of his, that thing no other demon had ever done before, not even Angel whose soul had been forced upon him. She winced now, thinking of how she and Xander had mocked Spike when he had been crazed with the guilt that the soul had brought him, how she had left him to struggle with it all alone in the basement of the high school, how she had never been able to even look at him without that rape attempt flashing through her brain.

And then, when he had recovered his balance and the change the soul had made to him became apparent, she had been angry at him, publicly decried and humiliated him for no longer having those lethal characteristics that she had hated and condemned him for, but now needed in her fight against the First.

God, the things she had done! Sitting on her bed in the Hyperion now, she suddenly saw it all. Faced herself. Faced everything she had so carefully blocked out the last year. All the things she had never acknowledged and her own responsibility for them. Finally admitted to herself that most of the blame had been hers, not his. He'd made a mess of it, had done wrong, made some horrible mistakes; but she had done so much worse and made so many more.

He had tried so hard, but she had never given him credit for any of it.

She found that she was weeping. She didn't make a sound, but the tears flooded down her face, just kept falling. Willow, coming in with a brief tap on the door and a wide smile to ask how the evening had gone, stopped short in dismay.

"Buffy! What's wrong? I thought you had fun tonight with Faith and the others!"

"I didn't. Not really. And I sat down to try to figure out why and...and...I really looked at myself, Will. For the first time."

"But why should that upset you so much? There's nothing wrong with you, Buff!"

"Everything's wrong!" cried Buffy. And all of it came pouring out.

"That's your guilt talking," Willow said gently at the end. "You're being too hard on yourself."

"Better than being too easy and living on the Nile as I always have." She took the handkerchief Willow held out and scrubbed furiously at her face. "I'm not going to do that again. Not ever."

"It's not all your fault."

"So much of it is. I feel so guilty. If only there was a way to fix it! But there's no fixing it. No way to make up for it. He's dead, Will. Burned to ash being my Champion. And I never gave him anything. Not even a crumb."

Willow just hugged her and didn't say anything. There was nothing anyone could say.

"He saved us all. Saved the whole world really, all those billions of people that the First would have destroyed. But he didn't care about that. He didn't do it for them. He did it for me. And I didn't even grieve for him."

Willow stroked her hair. "You're grieving now."

"It finally hit me. What I've done. What he did. I'll never forgive myself."

"He'd forgive you."

"Yes, he would. He always did. That's why I can't."

"Maybe you can't now when it's all raw and fresh. But you do get past it," said Willow from the depths of her own grief over Tara's death and the knowledge of the evil she had done herself as Dark-Willow. "You can't change it, but you do learn to live with what you've done and to try not to do it again. That's all one can do."

"If only..."

Two of the saddest words in the world and Willow had said them countless times herself in the stillness of her own mind.

"Yeah," she sighed. "But you can't destroy yourself with guilt and grief, Buff. Because they wouldn't want it."

Buffy gave her a glance of painful understanding. "You too?"

Willow nodded. "And Xander over Anya. He hurt her, but still she came and fought for us."

"And died. And I didn't even mourn her," said Buffy sadly. "What's wrong with us, Will?"

"We've all had blinders over our eyes. But they've come off now and we can change. We've all made mistakes that can't be fixed. All we can do is not let it happen again."

"But it won't help them," said Buffy with self-hating bitterness.

"Don't," said Willow, catching that. "You can't let it break you. He did it for you and it kind of lessens his sacrifice to break, if you see what I mean."

"Oh, God." Buffy swiped at her face. "How do you stand it?"

"You just do," said Willow out of hard experience. "You just take it day by day and step by step, and do the best you can."

"Live with it."

"Yes."

So she lived with it. But the guilt didn't lessen and she didn't want it to. She deserved it. And the pain only grew. She didn't know why. Maybe it would have helped if she had been able to really talk to Willow about it. But though Willow now had a whole different perspective on Spike after his sacrifice in the Hellmouth, she didn't really know what Buffy had done to him or the full weight of the guilt on her heart. Buffy had told her some, but not all. The rest of it was between her and Spike, and she couldn't allow even Willow in on something that personal, just as Willow couldn't tell her all that had happened between Tara and herself that was hurting Willow so badly.

Giles called and said that everything was ready for them in England. The Sunnydale Potentials and the newly activated Slayers that had been collected were all excited by the move. Angel came to see them all off.

"Thank you for letting us use the Hyperion," Buffy said to him. "I don't know what we would have done without it."

"It was a pleasure having you around." But his glance betrayed that he had hoped for more, that he had hoped her cookies had done baking. She felt strangely awkward around him and the little frown in his eyes told her that he had noticed her faint stiffness and distance.

But what could he expect? His curse was still there and any relationship between them was as impossible as it had been from the start.

"You'll let me know where you are?" he said.

"Yes, of course."

"In case I shanshu," he said with careful lightness. Turning human, that meant; the promise the PTB held out to him like a carrot under his nose. If only it would happen, Buffy thought; if only he would turn human. They could be happy then.

He bent to kiss her and, to her own surprise, Buffy found herself unthinkingly turning her head so that his lips only grazed her cheek. She saw his brows snap together.

Now why had she done that? she thought in the bus carrying them all to the airport. She hadn't meant to. It had just happened.

And then she realized why. Because the last time they had kissed, Spike had seen them and had been so hurt. Yet another betrayal that kiss had been and subconsciously she hadn't wanted to repeat it.

Giles was there to meet them at Heathrow. He had another bus waiting for them, since it seemed the base he had found was in Hertfordshire, in a town called Caxley. The Council owned a huge old house there on sixty-three acres of ground and Giles had had the three floors above ground converted into dormitories, offices, libraries and mess-halls for all the Slayers they would be collecting. He had also created three sub-levels below ground that were still in the process of being turned into the training and security centers that he wanted kept hidden from the public eye.

Here in England too, there were newly activated Slayers to be collected. Willow located them and Buffy and the others went out to bring them to where they could be told what they were and then could be properly trained. Vi and Andrew were talking about creating a television commercial to advise all the others across the world of their natures and the existence of the Council, in the hopes that they would contact Caxley Hall of their own volition instead of having to be searched for.

"We'll need other centers too," said Giles. "A base in America for certain. Not at Cleveland though. Faith and Robin will have their hands full with the hellmouth there. They don't need more problems dumped on them. New York perhaps. And at least one in Europe. Paris? No, Rome. Would you be willing to go out there and set one up, Buffy?"

"Sure." She didn't care one way or the other and Italy was full of exciting things to see and do.

So she and Dawn went to Rome and got themselves a little apartment there. Willow and Xander came along but, since the two of them would be returning to England once the base in Rome was properly up and running, preferred to stay at the almost completed center. That had once been a private college which had gone bankrupt and had been falling into genteel decay when Giles acquired it. It was just outside Rome and it had the grounds and the basic infrastructure of dorms, halls and lecture rooms that Giles wanted, so it wasn't all that difficult to convert into a setup similar to Caxley Hall.

Xander was supervising the renovations, Willow was busy setting up a network of Wicca that would link with the one Giles had at Caxley, and Buffy had her hands full with collecting the activated Slayers in Europe and then establishing their training program. There was no time to think, which was a blessing.

She had thought being in such a fascinating place as Rome would lift her spirits, but it didn't. She and Dawn had seen all the sights and taken all the tours and gone to all the museums. To Buffy's surprise, Dawn had enjoyed it. Buffy hadn't. It was all beautiful and glorious, but she hadn't really felt anything. It was all somehow flat. Well, she had never really been interested in Culture with a big C anyway. Night life, now that was what was important.

And Rome had a very varied and vibrant night life, and a lot of very varied, vibrant and virile Italian men who were vociferously happy to show it to her since blonde American girls on their own devices in the Eternal City offered a lot of interesting possibilities to them. They however offered almost none to Buffy. They all wanted the same thing and they all seemed the same, running into each other like faceless mannequins; and if Luigi had shown up one evening instead of Marco or Giuseppe instead of Benvenuto, she wouldn't have known the difference, or cared.

It was almost as if she were going dead inside, the way she had when Willow had resurrected her. She just wasn't interested. Not in anything. She just felt numb.

Giles had found a boarding school for Dawn, well reputed and for the well-to-do, with a good curriculum and the lessons taught in English. They had gone to visit it and Dawn had liked it. That was a relief, because with everything that was going on, Buffy hadn't had much time for Dawn and had been feeling guilty about that too.

Xander was coming to drive Dawn to the school. Dawn didn't want Buffy to come with her because the other girls might think she needed her sister to hold her hand and she considered herself way too grown up for that. But Buffy didn't want her going off alone either, so Xander was the compromise. Xander didn't mind and even said he'd be happy to drive Dawn back and forth on the weekends she wanted to come visit. So that worked out all right.

She could hear Dawn's voice out in the corridor, talking vivaciously to a teenager from the next apartment. Male, of course. Smiling wryly, she glanced into Dawn's bedroom. As she had expected, piles of clothes to be taken were still scattered over Dawn's bed and her suitcases were half empty though at least the trunk she was taking was filled and locked. Xander would be arriving in half an hour. Buffy shook her head ruefully and went in to finish the packing.

She had one suitcase closed and the other almost done. She lifted the last pile of clothing and packed it neatly, then turned over the silver picture frame that had been lying on its face under it. A picture of Joyce was already in one of the suitcases, but Buffy expected this to be another. Or of Hank Summers, or maybe even of her.

It wasn't. It was of Spike.

She froze, staring at it. It wasn't a professional studio shot with precise lighting and focus. It was the kind of grab-shot with background blur showing noise pattern that made her think of a video frame from a cheap camcorder rather than a shot from a camera.

But it was utterly Spike, his head tilted in the middle of lighting a cigarette, that teasing grin on his lips and his scarred eyebrow flying wickedly.

She felt as if something had just thudded hard into her guts. Her knees suddenly weak, she sank down onto the side of the bed, unable to take her eyes off the picture.

It was abruptly snatched from her hand.

"That's mine!" snapped Dawn. "You had no right to snoop!"

"I wasn't snooping. It was lying on the bed. I was only going to pack it when I saw..." Buffy stopped, unable to speak through the painful constriction in her throat. "How...?"

"How did I get the picture?" Dawn looked sadly down at it. "It isn't a real picture, just a still. Remember when Andrew was taking video of all of us? Well, he let me borrow the camcorder and take some too."

That explained the relaxed, teasing expression on Spike's face. He wouldn't have looked at Andrew that way; there would have been an irritated, half-scornful distance. But she could see Spike looking up at Dawn like that, with that intimate flicker of vivid laughter and challenge that was so utterly him.

"Andrew still has the camcorder. He showed me all the takes while we were in London and I pointed out the frame I wanted and he made a still for me. It's mine!" said Dawn defiantly and placed the picture protectively into her suitcase. "You don't care about Spike and I do!"

"Of course it's yours," said Buffy numbly as Dawn hurriedly closed and locked her suitcase. Maybe Andrew would make a copy for her if she asked.

Not care about Spike? Maybe it seemed that way to Dawn, to all of the others. Buffy had never been open about her feelings. It looked like she had been all too successful in hiding her pain. Only Willow had even the slightest inkling about it.

There was a knock on the front door of the flat and Dawn went to answer it. It was Xander. The bustle of helping him wrestle Dawn's trunk and suitcases down to the car and then waving the two of them off kept her from thinking for a little while. Then she was alone. She went back up to the flat and sat down on the couch. Her heart was hurting her.

No, she wouldn't ask Andrew for a copy of that picture. That look was for Dawn. He had never been so relaxed with Buffy that last year, or even the year before. All Buffy had seen on Spike's face that last year was pain. Like that time she had run into him in the hallway when she was dressing to go out with Robin Wood and he had known it. God, she had been so unthinkingly, unnecessarily cruel! Hadn't even thought about what he must have been feeling. She had been moving on, moving away from him, leaving him behind. And he had known that too, accepted it.

Oh, God. She bent over, hugging herself, her forehead on her knees, understanding and agony flowering at last.

She hadn't lied. She _had_ loved him. She did. It had just taken her this long to realize it.

Too late. She sat there, holding herself and breathing harshly through her mouth. No tears. She had gone past that. Way past that. There was no use in tears.

Picture? She didn't need a picture. His image was etched into her brain, was burned into the back of her closed eyelids. The wistfulness and the yearning in his face, those vividly blue eyes looking at her with all that love and devotion she had refused to see. She had thrown it all away.

She was seeing it all now, every step of their long, complicated, tortuous relationship. The slow growth and change in him from that lethal, unrepentantly evil vamp who had first come to Sunnydale to the shining Champion burning into ash in the Hellmouth.

A sudden sensory memory overwhelmed her, vivid and agonizing. His body upon hers, within her; the feel of his skin satin against hers; the scent of him; the taste of his mouth; the way he kissed her, looked at her. All gone and never to be again.

Why hadn't she pulled that amulet off him? She hadn't even thought to do so. The Turok-Han had been destroyed. There was no need to bring the Hellmouth down, no need for him to die. She could have saved him. He could have been with her.

He could have been alive.

Even if she never saw him again, he would have been alive. That was all that mattered. It was all her fault. She had destroyed him and never seen what she was doing, never valued what she had or all that he had given her.

She knew now. And now she looked into her future and saw only emptiness. All those endless days of loss and guilt and regret that stretched before her and which she deserved.

"What's up with you, Buff?" asked Xander.

It was a couple of weeks later. Buffy looked up dully from the whiteboard on which she was listing where each Slayer or SIT on patrol tonight was going to be.

"Huh?"

"You're kinda like Robo-Buffy these days. Except not the perky, happy one. You missing Dawn?"

She hadn't thought her misery showed. "I guess."

She was going numbly through the motions, doing her duty, training the SITs. Being what they all expected her to be, while keeping her grief and pain to herself. But it seemed she hadn't been as successful at that as she thought.

"We're all tired, Xand," said Willow with careful lightness, running interference. Buffy gave her a grateful glance. "We've been working pretty hard these last couple of months and I know I'll be glad when the College is complete." That was what they were calling the Rome base, to distinguish it from Caxley Hall in England.

"Nearly there," said Xander. "Won't be long now. We should go out and celebrate once it's done. We'll have earned it."

"We will," agreed Buffy, then sighed. "If we have time with all these vamps."

There had been a recent surge in the number of vamp attacks in Rome. The full-Slayers had their hands full dealing with them. Even a few of the SITs had run up against a couple and were very proud of having succeeded in dusting them while only half-trained, even though they had had to gang up to do it.

Rome had a Master. Which was a possibility Giles should perhaps have considered when he decided to establish a base there. When one thought of how ancient the city was, maybe that was only to be expected. Understandably, Rome's Master was not at all happy about a bunch of Slayers suddenly installing themselves right in the middle of his turf. His minions had clearly been told to drive them out if they could possibly do so without harm to themselves. That caveat became obvious when they didn't attack in force, only harassed the Slayers, trying to get at them when they were alone and hopefully vulnerable. It seemed that the Master didn't want to diminish his power by losing too many of them.

Buffy was searching for him, but in a city of almost four million people spread over roughly five hundred square miles finding one individual who was keeping himself well-hidden was almost impossible.

"I still say it's that Immortal," muttered Xander.

Buffy didn't think so. The Immortal. As if. Anyone who called himself that couldn't be taken seriously. Any vamp or demon was potentially immortal. To claim to be the only one was just plain silly and pretentious. Buffy had gone out of her way to 'accidentally' run into him at a nightclub and, from the way he had preened and postured, she had judged him to be mostly vanity and brag. She would have dusted him if he hadn't taken one look at her and run. After that, she hadn't seen his face anywhere in Rome and she had a feeling he had fled the city entirely. No, the Master was someone else.

"There's a new vamp in the Colosseo district," one of the full-Slayers reported that afternoon. She wasn't a SunnyD Slayer. Philippa was one of the ones activated by Willow's spell. They had located her in London and she had shown real aptitude, had graduated into a full-Slayer while almost all the others were still in training.

"Is?" said Willow in surprise. "You mean he's still alive? Well, undead. You weren't able to dust him?"

"Too fast and too clever," said Philippa. "This one likes to play games. He's a tease. He doesn't attack, just turns up on the periphery of your awareness so that you pick up the vamp vibe, then when he's got your attention takes off like a will-o'-the-wisp. You end up chasing him all over the landscape and he's laughing at you the whole time."

"He doesn't attack?" Buffy asked, frowning.

"Nah. Just wears you out running after him. I don't think he's one of the Master's minions," Philippa said, considering it. "Loose cannon, I'd say."

"Around the Colosseum? I'll check it out tonight," said Buffy. "With Rome's Master sending his people after us, all we need is some idiot playing games. With any luck I can dust him and that'll get him out of our hair. What's he look like?"

"Some Billy Idol wannabe. What?" asked Philippa, surprised, when both Buffy and Willow jerked around to stare at her.

"Billy...Idol?"

"Well, it's just an impression. Hair that looks white under the streetlights, black clothes, long black coat..."

"Like a duster?"

"I guess. No one gets close enough to get a really good look."

"Buffy..." Willow began worriedly.

"When did he show up?" Buffy asked in a squeezed voice.

"Two nights ago." Phillippa was starting to look worried as well. "Is something wrong?"

"No, no." Willow grabbed Buffy's arm and pulled her away into the room Willow was using as an office. "Buffy, it's not Spike!"

Buffy was white, staring right through her and not listening. "A hundred and forty-seven days. That's how long I took to resurrect. And two nights ago would have been..."

"Buffy, don't. Spike's dead. He burned to ash."

"I died. You brought me back. Maybe..."

"No. You just want it to be that way."

"Oh, God!" Buffy sat down heavily and hid her face in her hands. "Oh, God, yeah. I want it."

"Sometimes I turn my head and I see some girl with long brown hair and that general height and shape and I think, 'It's Tara!'" Willow swallowed hard. "But it never is and it never will be. I just want it to be."

"But what if...?"

"It's not Spike. C'mon, Buff. How many people want to look like Billy Idol? There's always someone trying it on."

"A vamp?"

"Why not? Spike had a rep. Some joker's cashing in on it."

That was both possible and likely—some ambitious fledgling thinking to steal the mantle and appropriate the dazzling reputation he didn't have balls enough to earn for himself. Buffy's face went grim and hard.

"He'll pay," she said through her teeth. "How dare he! If someone's playing games like that, he'll be sorry. I'll dust him for it."

She was in a cold fury when she went on the hunt that night. If this upstart was stalking Slayers, he'd get more than he bargained for. It wasn't a Slayer in training or even a recently graduated full-Slayer that he'd be facing. It would be the most experienced Slayer that existed and one with a grudge.

She took the Metropolitana, Rome's subway system, arriving at the Colosseo station before eleven thirty when the Metro stopped running. She crossed the Via dei Fori Imperiali which cut through the center of the Colosseo district, running from the Colosseum to the Piazza Venezia, with the Roman Forum on one side and Trajan's Forum and Market on the other, all must-see tourist attractions that she and Dawn had already visited, so she knew the basic layout.

She still hadn't become accustomed to the incredible age of Rome and it gave her a thrill to step onto the cobblestones of the square surrounding the Colosseum. It was one of the few places in Rome that was on the same level as in ancient times. The ancient city was anywhere from twenty-four to forty-five feet below the current one, what with the layers and layers of buildings and roads that had accumulated over the centuries. But when she walked on these cobblestones, she was walking on the same stones the ancient Romans had walked on two thousand years ago.

Even though it was close to midnight, there were still plenty of pedestrians around. She wove her way through them, moving clockwise around the square, the magnificent looming bulk of the Colosseum on her right, its three rows of archways and top row of windows spectacularly lit, as was the huge victory Arch that the emperor Constantine had built a little way to the west to celebrate some triumph.

With her senses extended as far as they would go to pick up that quiver that would alert her to vamp presence in the area, she walked all four sides of the square. She was bait. All the other Slayers had been warned to stay away from the area. If the vamp was stalking Slayers, the only one available would be her and then he would find he wasn't the hunter but the hunted.

It was almost three a.m. now, but she wouldn't give up until the sun rose. The streets had emptied, with only a couple of pedestrians still around. No vamp signature had turned up so far and maybe would not until a couple more nights had gone by. She couldn't really hope to hit paydirt the very first night. But she was patient, making forays into and out of the cross streets around the Colosseum to establish her presence in the area, but always returning to the square as the center of her web.

She was up at the northwest side of the square when that little shiver of vamp awareness crisped her nerves. She spun, her gaze searching the area. There! Movement under an olive tree halfway down the west side of the square. She raced forward.

A dark shape broke from under the olive, ran south, leaping lightly over barriers, silent on the grass, the wave of a raised arm urging her on mockingly. Playing games as Philippa had said.

Pale hair gleamed under the streetlights and the spillover of light from the Colosseum. Dark tee and jeans. The swirl of a black leather duster. But now that she was closer, that hair didn't seem white. It looked more like a light honey-brown. It wasn't Spike, as she had hoped against hope down in the depths of her heart. It was an imposter just as Willow had said.

"You!" she yelled, her voice carrying in the night air. With any luck, it would startle him into pausing long enough for her to catch up with him and dust him with the stake she had ready.

He looked back over his shoulder and laughed. And her heart nearly stopped. It was Spike's laugh, vivid with mockery through an open mouth whose shape she knew so well. Fangs flashed, but even full gameface couldn't hide that profile—that spectacular cheekbone and the strong, clear jaw and the scarred eyebrow and the particular shape of his eye looking back at her, though its iris was gold rather than blue.

"Spike!" she gasped.

He wasn't a ghost. He had moved silently across the grass, but he was crossing cobblestones now and she could hear the scrape of his boots—Docs!— on the stone.

At the sound of his name, he spun to face her. He had reached the Arch of Constantine and the lights spotlighting it backwashed over him. She could see every detail. He was in full gameface, but that didn't matter. Every gameface was unique and she knew his as thoroughly as she knew his human face. It could be no one else's. And she knew every ripped muscle of his body under that duster and the tilt of his head and his stance, thumbs hooked into his belt like that. She knew everything about him. It _was _Spike.

Then he laughed again and whipped around the Arch.

When she ran after him, he was gone. She raced around all sides of the Arch. But there was no one there or any sign of him in the square or the cross streets. Even the vamp signature she hadn't been able to come close enough to know for sure was his had faded away, insubstantial as a dream.

But it hadn't been a dream. She wasn't hallucinating. He _had_ been there.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Buffy, are you sure it's Spike?" Willow asked.

"It's Spike! Do you think I wouldn't know?"

"But..."

"For Pete's sake, Will, you can't have a man on top of you for three months and not know every detail of his face!"

Willow blushed.

"Sorry!" Buffy flushed herself. "But you know what I mean. Wouldn't you know Tara that well? For instance, how her mouth moved or if her lashes were curved instead of straight or how she looked when she woke up."

"Yeah, I would."

"Not that I would know how Spike looks when he wakes up," she muttered. "I never slept with him, always kicked him in the head and ran off after...uh, TMI."

"Definitely TMI," agreed Willow, even pinker.

Just that first morning after and she hadn't really looked at him then, just jerked to her feet, horrified by having slept with him at all. Now she wished she had looked. She was hungry for everything she had so deliberately avoided seeing and now missed.

"Anyway. The Colosseo district's mine for a while, okay? Tell the others to stay out of it. But don't tell Xander or anyone else why. Not until we know what's going on."

"Okay. We don't really know if it's Spike. The whole thing could be a..." Willow broke off awkwardly.

"A hallucination? God! Maybe I _am_ going round the bend, Will!"

From the uneasy way Willow was looking at her, Willow was wondering just that. Three days later, Buffy was starting to wonder as well. Patrolling the area had turned up nothing but two perfectly ordinary vamps whom Buffy dusted without the least effort at all. Maybe she really had dreamed the whole thing.

"I need more sleep," yawned Buffy. Between spending the whole night stalking the Colosseo district and the day training SITs, she was exhausted. "At least it's the weekend. I'll be able to grab a few zees before going out on patrol."

She hadn't gone to bed yet. She and Willow and Xander had decided to do the touristy thing and spend the morning at the Piazza Navona with its free show of mimes and artists and musicians and its three famous fountains. She had gone straight from patrol to meet them there, but they had all decided to come back to her apartment for lunch rather than shell out at the very pricey restaurants at the piazza.

"What's the deal with patrol, Buff?" Xander asked. "Is there some new threat you haven't been telling us about? You don't usually spend the whole night...Merciful Zeus!"

Buffy and Willow looked where he was staring, then came to an abrupt stop themselves. A man had stepped out of Buffy's small apartment building and was strolling away down the street.

"That...that's Spike!" gasped Xander.

"It can't be Spike!" Willow exclaimed. "If it was, he'd be burning up by now!"

All three of them involuntarily looked upwards. It was high noon and the sun was blazing directly down upon them. There was no protection from it anywhere on the street. Spike's double was strolling along in full sunlight.

"A doppelgänger? He's not a vamp, that's for sure. Hey, Spike!" Xander bellowed, loud enough that the guy must have heard. But he didn't look around or even break his stride, as if the name meant nothing to him and he thought someone else was being hailed.

"Come on!" snapped Buffy and they all three ran after him.

"It's someone else," Willow was saying as they ran. "He's wearing the wrong clothes and where's the duster? Besides, look at his hair!"

The hair was definitely a tumble of light honey-brown curls instead of slicked-back bleached-white and though he was wearing a black tee with a gold chain around his neck, it was paired with white slacks and sneakers—not even Docs—and the duster was nowhere in sight. But the face was Spike's face.

"Could he be the guy you saw that night?" Willow asked Buffy under her breath.

"But that one was a vamp!"

"Maybe he wasn't. Are you sure about that vamp vibe?"

"I'm not sure about anything anymore. He looks like Spike, but..."

Willow nodded, knowing what she meant. "Yeah."

He looked like Spike, but he didn't carry himself the same way. His walk was a calm stroll, not Spike's cocky swagger; and his expression was quiet and reserved. He looked the studious type, an introvert rather than an extrovert.

He was heading towards a café just down the street, one which Buffy and the rest of them often frequented. They exchanged glances as he sat down at one of the outside tables, then ran to grab the one next to him before anyone else could do so.

"Giorgio, the usual," called Xander.

The waiter coming towards them nodded, then stopped beside Spike's double who ordered in fluent Italian.

"Did Spike speak...?" Willow murmured and Buffy shook her head.

"Not that I know of."

The waiter went off and Xander suddenly leaned forward and tapped the double's arm. He looked around in surprise, his brows rising.

"Hey, Spike!" said Xander in a hearty voice. "Good to see you!"

"I'm afraid you've made some sort of mistake." The voice was familiar and it was Spike's. But it didn't have that North London accent Spike liked to use. Instead the intonation and phrasing was similar to Giles'. Received Pronunciation, Giles had called it once, whatever that meant. Oxford English, someone else had named it. Which meant it was very likely the actual accent of the poet and gentleman Spike had been before he was turned.

"You're British, aren't you?" Xander plowed on.

"Quite." There was a dry edge to the one syllable and a sardonic look in the blue eyes that scanned Xander disdainfully from head to foot. Again Buffy was reminded of Giles at his most high horse. "And you're American, aren't you?"

And therefore expected to be both crazy and boorish, said the voice without actually coming out and saying it; it was just in the intonation.

Willow blushed. "We're sorry! We didn't mean...It's just that you look like someone we know."

Her confusion made the blue gaze warm. He took in the fact that she was a very pretty redhead and promptly lost the wariness that came from being accosted by perfect strangers.

"Sorry I'm not him." He smiled at Willow. "Spike, did you say? That's a strange name."

"He's a strange guy," muttered Xander.

"You look exactly like him," explained Willow. "You must think we're all nuts."

"No, no," he said politely, but the guarded glance said he did.

"We're being rude," said Willow hurriedly. "I'm Willow and that's Xander..."

"Xander?" Another strange name, said the glance.

"It's short for Alexander."

"Ah!"

"And that's Buffy."

The glance suddenly developed definite interest as it settled on Buffy. "Buffy?"

"Short for Elizabeth," said Buffy a little ruefully, all too used to people's reactions to her name. "Elizabeth Summers."

"Unusual. And charming." His face had relaxed and was now looking as if he was more than willing to be friendly. Especially to Buffy. "I'm William. William Knight."

"William," said Xander in a choked voice.

"Most people call me Will."

"That's what they call me too," said Willow to cover everyone's stupefied reaction.

"Well, then we'd better leave it as Willow and William. Otherwise we won't know which one of us should answer if someone says Will."

Very much like Giles, thought Buffy, in the awkwardness and the faint formality. No smooth talker, this one, diffident and lacking Spike's easy confidence.

"William the Bloody?" Xander said under his breath in her ear.

"Shut up. He'll hear. He already thinks we're crazy," she muttered back, glad that Giorgio's setting down their orders was distracting William's attention.

"What the hell's going on?"

"Good question."

"Why don't you join us?" Willow was saying to William.

"I'd be delighted," said William, his gaze on Buffy, and transferred over to a chair next to her at their table. "So you're tourists."

Xander groaned. "Is it so obvious?"

"You're drinking cappuccinos after eleven." His was a plain espresso. "Romans usually drink that only for breakfast." He smiled a little. "Actually that's a bit of a joke, because I have seen them drinking it later than that. I think that 'after eleven' business is just people being snobbish. But it does tend to be the tourists."

"You're not a tourist?" asked Xander.

"I lecture at St. Mark's. It's a university about ten blocks that way. Associated with the American University in Rome. A great way to see Italy and Greece and get paid for it."

"You're a scholar," said Willow. "Oxford trained?"

He nodded, a little uneasy under the intensity of their concentration on him.

"What do you teach?" asked Willow, feeling her way.

"Classical Studies and Classical Heritage. In this case, Classical Greek and Roman rhetoric. And Magna Graecia." He noticed that Willow was nodding, but that Buffy and Xander were looking blank. "Uh, that last one's about conflicting regimes in the ancient Mediterranean."

"Are you a poet?" Buffy asked suddenly and the other two shot her quick glances, knowing what she was after.

William flushed a little. "How did you guess that? I dabble a bit. What about you lot?" he asked hurriedly, clearly trying to change the subject. "_Are _you tourists?"

"I guess you could say Xander and I are," Willow said. "We won't be in Rome too much longer. But Buffy's going to be living here."

"Oh?" He gave Buffy a pleased glance.

"Yeah, that's why we noticed you," explained Xander. "You came out of the apartment building she lives in."

"Yes, I just rented a studio flat on the fourth floor." William smiled at Buffy. "We'll be neighbors."

Buffy smiled back weakly. "I'm on the third."

"So, student, worker, lady of leisure?"

Willow and Buffy exchanged glances. It was fine to be the ones asking the questions, but they weren't sure how much to tell him of them.

"I guess you can say she teaches too," said Willow vaguely.

"You're rather young for that, aren't you? You can't be more than twenty-two. What's your field?"

"Martial arts," said Buffy hurriedly.

"Really?" William looked at once impressed and taken aback. He opened his mouth to say something else, then turned his head at the sound of Willow muttering something rapidly over a coin she had taken from the back pocket of her jeans. "What...?"

"I bought this at the Piazza Navona," she said and handed it to him. "It's supposed to be a copy of an Augustian denarius. If you're into Classical Studies, you must know about things like that. How good a copy is it?"

"It's..." He froze into stillness, his gaze fixed on the coin.

"Whoa!" Xander exclaimed. "What did you do to him, Will?"

"It's a kind of hypnosis. Good thing I had that denarius in my pocket to act as a focus."

"But why?"

"Because I need to do an analysis of him and I couldn't figure out any other way to get him to sit still for it. You didn't want him to know what we're into, did you?"

"No way," said Buffy. "And we do need to do that analysis. Who is he? What is he? He seems just an ordinary guy. Perfectly innocent. He's no vamp."

"Since he's sitting in the sun, Buff," said Xander dryly, "I guessed that a while back."

"Well, he could have had something like the Gem of Amara."

They all glanced at William's hands, but they were bare of rings and the chain he was wearing around his neck was plain gold and didn't look as if it were any kind of magical artefact.

Willow reached out and touched it anyway just to make sure, then shook her head.

"No magic about him." She brushed William's forearm, bare under the short sleeve of his tee. "He's not a vamp. He's warm. A vamp would be about thirty degrees cooler than us. His body temperature's the normal 98.6."

Buffy laid a hand lightly on his chest. "And he has a heartbeat. He's human."

Willow had her eyes closed in concentration, doing some quiet, hidden scan that was not visible to either Buffy or Xander or thankfully people at neighboring tables.

"He is human," she confirmed after a while. "I can't pick up any abnormalities."

"Does he have a soul?" Xander asked sharply.

Willow whispered a few words under her breath. The coin in William's hand suddenly flared a brilliant green, then went back to bronze.

"He does have a soul."

"Well, at least they didn't take that from him after everything he went through for it," Buffy muttered.

"Buffy, it's not Spike!" Xander snapped.

"No, he's not. But he's William, isn't he?"

They all stared at each other.

"It could be a double," Xander muttered. "Everyone's supposed to have a double, don't they? Somewhere in the world?"

"Calling himself William? Being a Classics scholar? Writing poetry?" Willow sighed. "That's kinda pushing coincidence a little too far, Xand."

"This is too weird." Xander shook his head blankly.

"The differences are interesting," said Willow. "Suggestive, even. Look, he doesn't have that scar across his eyebrow."

Xander twisted around Buffy to check William's left eyebrow. "You're right. I think I see what you're getting at, Will. He isn't even William the Bloody. It's as if he's the guy he must have been before he was turned."

"They've given that back to him," Buffy murmured. "They've taken away the turning and the guilt. Made all those deaths not happen, at least for him. Maybe it's a reward for his sacrifice in the Hellmouth."

Xander rubbed a hand across his face. "They who?"

"Maybe the Powers That Be, Xand," said Willow. "Who understands the way they think? Hey, you know what? He's Shanshued!"

"Yeesh! You may be right, Will!" Xander gave a sudden snort of laughter. "Angel's gonna have a cow!"

Willow couldn't help laughing too at the thought of how Angel would react to this turn of events. But Buffy was thinking of the Shanshu. To become human, that meant. This wasn't Spike. This was Spike as he had been before he became a vampire. This was Spike human. He had been given a second chance.

She looked at him. The hair was different and the clothes. But everything else about him was dearly familiar. His features and the blue of his eyes and the very scent of him. There she had been thinking that if Angel had shanshued, they might have been happy. And here was Spike shanshued. Spike whom she loved. Maybe they had both been given a second chance.

But she had to go carefully. Couldn't rush things. There would be no third chances. She had to do things right, couldn't screw this up.

"You'd better bring him out of it, Willow," she said. "People might start to notice if he's frozen like that much longer."

"Shall I make him forget about all this?"

"No. We'll be running into each other if he's living in the same building and that might make things complicated."

"That's true. Just a tiny jump in time for him then. What do you think, William?" she said, picking up the conversation where it had stopped. "How good a copy is it?"

William jumped and blinked. "What? Oh, sorry! I seem to have blanked there for a moment." He rubbed a hand across his eyes. "It's, um, it's a surprisingly good copy for something you just picked up in the Piazza Navona. Most of what the street pedlars sell there is usually nothing more than tourist junk."

"I got it from a jewelry store."

"That explains it." He looked up as Xander rose and went off to pay for their lunch. "Oh, are you leaving?"

"I work nights," Buffy explained. "And I haven't been to bed yet. I need to get some sleep."

"I-I hope we'll meet again sometime soon."

"I'd like that." She smiled at him. "My apartment's 3D."

His eyes lit up. "Mine's 4A."

"See you around," she said lightly, certain of that. If he didn't move on it, she would.

"That vamp you saw at the Colosseum," Willow said when they reached Buffy's building. "What if it wasn't a vamp? What if it was him?"

"Maybe I was mistaken about the vamp vibe." Even about the gameface. Maybe she had seen what she wanted to see. "Darn, I should have asked where he was that night. I will the next time I run into him. It must have been William, but I thought he was Spike, so I was expecting him be a vamp."

"Vamp?" asked Xander who had been lagging behind. "What vamp?"

"Buffy saw a vamp she thought was Spike at the Colosseum a few days ago," Willow explained. "But now we think it must have been William."

"Had to be. Weird enough for him to come back like that. Can't be two." Xander shuddered. "God, what a thought! That really makes my brain spin out."

Buffy laughed. She would have laughed at the lamest of jokes right now. She was feeling so hopeful after the misery of the last few months.

She slept really well for the first time in ages and almost didn't go on patrol that night. But if she didn't, no one else would do the Colosseo district tonight since it was marked as hers on the whiteboard at the College.

It was midnight before she finally got there and started to make her forays up and down the cross streets all around the Colosseum. For an hour nothing turned up and she was almost going to call it a night when she picked up the faint trace of vamp presence. She whirled and started to run it down.

The vamp seemed to be aware of her as well, because it ran too, whipping through the streets and staying just barely on the edge of her senses. But she was locked on it now and it couldn't escape.

Then she was chasing it down the west side of the square around the Colosseum. It was darting in and out of the trees, but she finally got a clear view of it. Black leather duster, black jeans, Docs, white hair.

"Spike?" Buffy exclaimed in shock.

He stopped short and spun to face her.

"Why do you call me that?"

He was in full gameface, fangs flashing in the streetlights. And that was definitely a vamp vibe. Even though she wasn't close enough yet to make out the vibe precisely, there was no mistaking that he was a vamp.

"You called me that before," he said. "It felt right."

"William?"

"No," he said, aggrieved. "That's not right. You don't really know my name, do you? I just thought you did."

"Spike," she breathed.

He let out a sharp breath. "Yeah. That feels right. Yeah. Spike."

She was almost close enough to read his signature. But he kept backing away, half wary, half teasing.

"No. Stop," she said urgently.

"Not gonna let you dust me, Slayer." He grinned at her. It was Spike's grin, vivid with laughter and mockery. It was Spike's stance, hands on hips, head tilted. "Fun's in making you run around, innit? Fun's in the chase. No fun in being dusted. You'd win then. Not gonna let you win."

"This isn't a game!"

"Sure it is. All you pretty little Slayers just panting for the kill. But doesn't it get boring? Innit more fun when there's risk involved? When the tables might be turned? Shall we dance, pet?"

Oh, God, it _was_ Spike!

"What are you?" she whispered. William was human. Willow had confirmed that. This being in front of her was a vamp. "I'm going crazy. Who are you?"

"If you don't know, who does? I sure don't." He laughed at her. "I'm me, pet. Who else would I be?"

"More games."

"Why not?"

"Stand still!" He kept backing away every time she tried to reach him and she needed to be just that little bit closer for her senses to be sure of who he was.

"Not that dumb, Slayer."

"Truce! For tonight." She slid her stake into its sheath at the small of her back, held up her empty hands. "See? I won't dust you."

"Your word?"

"Yes. On my honor."

He shrugged. "Whatever that's worth. Okay. But why?"

"Because I need to know what I'm dealing with."

"Suppose that makes sense. Only, you already know what you're dealing with, cutie. A vamp. A demon. What else is there to know?"

"A lot." She was almost in range now, coming carefully forward step by step, wary of setting him off again.

He moved, but not backwards. He flashed forward to stand right in front of her, only a couple of inches away.

"Be very disappointed in you if you dust me now, Slayer," he said, laughing.

Reckless as always. And the vibe was his. Spike's. That unmistakable vampire signature of his that she knew so well.

She put out a hand and laid it delicately on his chest. He looked down at it, amused. Solid muscle and bone under her palm. No hallucination, no phantom. Cool flesh under the soft cotton of his tee. Thirty degrees below the human 98.6. And no heartbeat. Definitely vamp, not human. But the scent of his body was oh so familiar.

"Drop the gameface. Please."

He looked at her for a moment. She expected another 'why?' and didn't know how she would answer it. But then he just shrugged. The gameface melted away.

And there was Spike's human face. From the vivid blue of his eyes to the reckless grin to the scarred eyebrow. Feature by feature, the same. Even the hair was white at close range. It must have been a trick of the light that had made her think before that it was honey-brown like William's.

"What game are you playing, Slayer?" he asked.

She raised her hand and brushed his left eyebrow. The scar was rough and real under her fingertips.

"I think someone's playing games with both of us."

"Oh, I don't think so." He smiled and fangs glinted at the corners of his mouth though his eyes were still blue. "I think this is just some variation you've thought up for the dance. It's amusing, but it's still the same game. The Great Game between Slayers and vamps."

"Spike..."

"That's me. Yeah. And you're _The _Slayer, aren't you? I can feel the difference. Those others, they're nothing. Newbies. Knew they were a waste of time, waste of a kill. Pushed them. Knew they'd call in the big gun." He smiled slowly and triumphantly. "You. You're the one. The real challenge. The one the Master promised. You're the one I've been looking for."

"To kill for Rome's Master."

He nodded. "That was the price he put on the _pax _that lets me stay in the city."

"So you're one of his minions," she said scornfully.

His brows flicked together, offended. "I'm no one's minion! Free agent here. A _pax_ doesn't bind me to him, only gives me permission to stay in his territory. Your death is the price he put on it. He didn't know I'd have done it anyway. You're the kill I want, Slayer."

It was the demon speaking to her, deadly and lethal. His hand flashed up and gripped her throat. His eyes had gone gold.

"Truce?" he purred. "There's no truce possible between vamp and Slayer. How could you think that?"

She struck his hand away. It flashed back, fingers rigid and stiffened, a blade pointed straight at her throat. Meaning to crush her larynx if the thrust connected. She blocked it swiftly.

"Yes!" he said exultantly. "Let's dance, Slayer!"

He'd gone into full gameface. His next blow sent her tumbling backwards ten feet across the grass and the cobblestones to thud painfully against the trunk of an olive tree. She recovered herself and got him with a spinkick as he came after her, knocking him back. Then they were at it, fast and furious, no holds barred.

He had never fought full out all the times they had battled before. He had always held back. She hadn't realized it then, but she did now that there was no holding back. This time he meant to kill.

But she couldn't bring herself to kill him, couldn't even bring herself to snatch her stake out from its sheath in the small of her back. He was Spike. It was the demon, but he was still Spike. She couldn't do it. All she could do was hold him off and that put her at a heavy disadvantage. Spike was as good a fighter as she, better really, with all those decades of making it an art form. Only her Slayer abilities had kept her ahead of him and only because she had meant to kill. This time she couldn't.

They battled back and forth under the trees it felt like forever, neither able to get the upper hand, she trying for a standoff, he trying for a kill.

"Sod it, you're not fighting, Slayer!" he snarled. He knew. He could feel the half-heartedness of her moves. "Fight!"

Whistles were blowing in the distance and there was the sound of thudding footsteps. Buffy caught a glimpse of two men in dark blue uniforms with a red stripe down the legs running towards them. Carabinieri. Some passerby must have seen them fighting even under the concealment of the trees and had called the cops. Spike spun, snarling.

"No!" she gasped, throwing herself between him and them.

"Is that what's needed to make you fight, Slayer? For me to attack humans?"

"I won't let you hurt them!"

"Why should I? Humans are too easy. They're only cattle to be eaten," he said contemptuously. "They're not even prey. You're prey, Slayer. And the dance is between you and me. But it looks like this one's gonna have to be postponed. See you later, cutie."

He flashed away and was lost in the shadows. Having no desire to spend hours explaining herself in an Italian police station, she ran as well, Slayer speed rapidly outdistancing two very bewildered cops.

She was bewildered too. There _were_ two of them. Two Spikes. Xander would freak. Somehow they had split. William had shanshued and was human. This other seemed to be purely demon. The William part had been separated out and left this other behind. And yet this other was Spike too.

'How' was irrelevant. The PTB could presumably do anything they wanted. 'Why' was the question.

More importantly, what was she going to do about it?

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

"Two of them!" exclaimed Willow and sat down abruptly on Buffy's couch as if her legs had given way under her. Buffy knew exactly what she felt like, because Buffy was just as fazed. "Are you sure it's not a...a figment of your imagination?"

"That 'figment' slammed me into every tree on the west side of the Colosseum." Buffy flexed her aching shoulders painfully. "He's way too solid to be a ghost."

"So he really is a vamp?"

"Oh, yeah. That wasn't William the human, like we thought it might be. No heartbeat. Cold skin. Vamp vibe. Plus the fangs, gameface and super-strength. Peaceful scholar. Not! All demon."

"The two sides," Willow mused. "William doesn't know who you are. Does this one?"

Buffy shook her head. "He knows what a Slayer is and he knows the others are newbies. All he wants is that notch on his belt. He was looking for me. To kill _the_ Slayer."

"Great. What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know!"

"You'll have to dust him."

"Willow, it's Spike!"

"It isn't Spike. It's the demon and he's trying to kill you."

"He looks like Spike, acts like him, talks like him. Will, he's more like Spike than William is!"

"You just want it to be Spike. It isn't."

"How do we know?"

"He's a danger," said Willow doggedly. "Not only to you, but to all of us. And he'll be feeding. That means people are dying."

"Willow, if Tara was a vamp, would you be able to dust her?"

Willow flinched. "No," she whispered.

"I can't kill him, Will! Not until we know what's going on. Not until I'm sure he's just the demon. God! Maybe not even then."

Neither of them said anything for a while.

"We don't know enough," Buffy said at last. "We've got to find out more. I mean, say I dust him. Will William die too?"

"Oh wow! I never thought of that!"

"I didn't either until just now."

"But William's human! I scanned him and I'm sure of that!"

"But there might be some kind of link." Buffy rubbed her hands roughly across her face. "And if there is...William has a soul. You said he did. How can I be responsible for his death? He's innocent. He hasn't killed anyone or eaten anyone. He doesn't even know such a thing as a vamp exists."

"Oh boy," sighed Willow. "This is getting more complicated by the minute."

"And even if there's no link, there are so many other ramifications. You've got to look into it, Willow. We've got to learn more."

Willow nodded. "I will." She let out a little breath of rueful laughter. "Xander's so gonna freak."

"Don't tell Xander! Don't tell anyone. Not yet. Not until we know what's what. They'll all start hunting demon-Spike with crossbows. Promise!"

"I promise."

"I could strangle the PTB," said Buffy violently. "I'm so sick of their games!"

Willow was with her when they ran into William on his way back from work that day. Like a lot of the older buildings in Rome, Buffy's had no elevator. They met on the stairs, William coming up just as they were walking down.

"Tweeds!" said Willow, awed, under her breath when she caught sight of him one flight below.

And waistcoat, tie, button-down shirt, and briefcase. They both stared. For someone who looked like Spike to be wearing something so uptight and formal seemed truly weird.

"Maybe he's channeling Giles instead," muttered Willow, then squeaked as he reached them.

Buffy nearly did too. William's hair was white.

"Uh, William," said Buffy in disbelief. "Your hair..."

William flushed bright red. And that was weird to see as well, not only because vamps couldn't blush, but because Spike, cocky and defiant, would never have blushed over anything in his unlife. Even when embarrassed, he just smirked and gleefully brazened it out.

"I went out for a few drinks with some friends last night," William mumbled. "It must have been their idea of a joke because I woke up this way and I can't remember having it done."

"I like it," said Buffy.

"Do you really?" He smiled with relief when they both nodded. "The faculty laughed, but no one really seemed to mind, not even the dean. I was wondering whether I should dye it back, but if you think it's not unbecoming, I'll just let it grow out on its own. Were you going somewhere?"

"Just over to the café to sit and watch the passersby. It looks like a nice evening to do that."

"Well, uh, would you two ladies care to go out to dinner with me?" He gave them a shy, but hopeful smile. "I would love to have your company."

"We'd like that," nodded Buffy and his face lit up.

"Let me just dump this briefcase and I'll be right back."

"I think I'll bow out now," murmured Willow with a teasing sideways glance at Buffy as William ran up the stairs. "You probably want to be alone with him and I'm guessing he'd prefer it."

"No!" Buffy grabbed at her. "Casual, casual. Gonna take this slow. No leaping into anything this time. And I don't know him. I know Spike, but I don't know William."

"You're nervous."

"Yeah. Plus there are a few questions we have to ask him without letting him know why we're asking and you're better at that than I am."

"Oh, right."

William didn't even notice he was being carefully probed over the aperitifs and the antipasto. No one minds being encouraged to talk about themselves and he happily answered all their questions with no hesitation or apparently any suspicion that they might have other reasons for asking than just friendly interest. His parents were dead, he had no siblings and his passage through Oxford to his degrees and now his present position with St Mark's University had been swift and smooth. His telling them of it was detailed and without gaps, not a hesitation or a blank spot evident. Seamless.

"Do you think it's his own history from before his turning or just something the PTB cooked up for him?" Willow murmured in Buffy's ear.

"I don't think it matters. Remember how all our memories got changed when the monks sent Dawn to us? And the monks are nothing to the PTB. I think it's close enough to the real thing that William believes it and I'll bet if you went back and checked for documentation, it would exist and everything he says would turn out to be hard fact."

"We're not going to find a way to get at the truth through William then."

"Mm. But what is truth?"

"Whoa!" Willow slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. "Buffy, you're turning into a philosopher."

Buffy gave her a reproachful look. "What? I'm not allowed to have layers?"

"I think I remember Cordy saying something like that once."

"Hey! You don't have to be mean!"

They both snickered, then stopped hurriedly when William, discussing wines with the waiter, gave them a puzzled look.

William knew wines, was into Culture with a big C like Giles from what Buffy could make out of the conversation, had all sorts of degrees and fellowships and firsts. He really was a scholar. Buffy on the other hand most certainly wasn't. His primary focus was mental, hers physical. That was the problem. Their interests and their lives—especially her life as a Slayer which she couldn't tell him about—were so far apart that conversation was awkward. He got along better with Willow and Buffy found herself falling silent as the evening wore on, their talk whooshing right over the top of her head.

She couldn't help watching him though. His sidelong glances at her under his lashes betrayed that he was aware of her attention, as any attracted male would be, and that he was both flattered and puzzled by it. No way to explain that her fascination was because he was and at the same time wasn't Spike.

His features were Spike's. His face was Spike's and she had desperately wanted to see that again, couldn't take her eyes away now or stop her glance from lingering. But the mind behind the face wasn't Spike. His expressions were different, his gestures, even the way he held himself, his shoulders drawn in rather than spread out, having that faint scholarly stoop instead of the cocky swagger.

"I'd better get back to the College," said Willow as they walked back from the restaurant. Her teasing glance at Buffy said she was giving them the opportunity to get together if they wanted. "Tomorrow's a working day and I've got some things I need to do early."

"It's hardly ten," said William, surprised, watching her walk swiftly away down the street. "She didn't have to rush off like that."

"She's being tactful," said Buffy and raised her face in an invitation that even a shy and diffident William couldn't miss.

His hands closed lightly on her upper arms, drawing her to him. 'Yes!' she thought as his face—Spike's face!—filled her vision. She leaned into him, smiling, her mouth opening to him with triumph.

And was appalled to find that she felt nothing when he kissed her. Oh, it was pleasant, but she felt no desire, no connection at all. It wasn't like having Spike back in her arms as she had hoped. Yes, the taste of his mouth was the same, and his scent, and the feel of his body against hers. But the way he kissed was different, and the tentative, hesitant way he held her, and the warmth of that body that should have been cool, and the quickening thud of his heart against her where there shouldn't have been a heart beat at all.

Of course William was human, so things would be different. And of course he wouldn't have that wicked skill that came from a hundred and twenty years of practice. But physically he was Spike and she should have felt something. Where was the intensity, the passion and desire? Why wasn't she feeling anything?

Because he was altogether a different man from Spike. Moreover, he wasn't the kind of person who would have attracted her in the first place. Spike had been right to say she needed some monster in her man.

She could take him upstairs, make love to him. Shy as William was, he wouldn't turn that down. Maybe she should. Maybe that would bring the feeling back. But it didn't seem right to do that. It seemed somehow like another betrayal. Because even though he looked like Spike, William was not Spike.

He felt her withdrawal.

"Too soon," he said ruefully, wanting more, but not surprised at being disappointed.

"I think...we need to get to know each other a little better."

"Of course," he said, unoffended and accepting his dismissal with grace since he could see that it wasn't a complete brush-off, just a slight delay.

He was William and she didn't know him well enough to love him. He didn't love her either, was just intrigued by a pretty girl. He walked her up to her apartment where she smiled good night and closed the door on him, frowning.

Wasn't this what she had wanted? For him to be human? And he was. But he wasn't Spike and that was who she wanted.

It was just that all of this was so weird. She couldn't adjust.

I can learn to adjust, she thought; I will. What am I doing, looking a gift horse in the mouth like this?

She was too restless and unsettled to go to bed yet. She went on patrol, which turned out to be completely uneventful that night, not a vamp to be seen, so she didn't even get to work off her frustration. She came back home still too troubled to sleep, so fixed herself a drink and took it to the table outside on the terrace. The terrace was wide enough to be nearly a small room itself and overlooked the little garden at the back of the building. The surrounding buildings were all lower than hers, so her view was of trees and terracotta tiled roofs, very quiet and peaceful, with only a glow of light to betray the existence of the expressways and busy streets behind them.

She sat there, sipping desultorily at her drink and watching a cat prowl across one of the roofs. It was two a.m. and if she didn't get some sleep now she would be useless tomorrow, but she knew that if she went to bed, she would only toss and turn. Better to sit here quietly and unwind.

Something dark flashed across the roofs.

A second later, hands caught the cement balustrade of the terrace and a form vaulted smoothly over. Moonlight gleamed on platinum hair. Buffy leaped to her feet, her hand flying to the stake in the small of her back.

"Truce, Slayer." Fangs glinted in the light from the living room windows, then the gameface vanished and he grinned at her.

"I thought you said truces aren't possible between vamps and Slayers," she retorted.

"Rules are made to be broken."

"And you're just the one to break them."

"Oh, yeah. But if you want to fight, I'd be happy to oblige, pet." He glanced around. "No space here. How about that garden? That should do. Come on down. Or shall I just toss you over?"

She raised her stake. "Try."

He laughed and hitched a hip on the balustrade, sat there comfortably swinging a leg. "Nah. Feel like talking tonight. I looked for you at the Colosseum, but you weren't there. Played hooky, did you?"

"I was there. We must have missed each other. How did you find me?"

"Wasn't hard. Word gets around. They say most of your Mini-Me's doss down in that College of yours. But everyone knows where _the_ Slayer lives. Buffy Summers. All I had to do was ask."

"Great," she muttered. "Now I have to worry about being swarmed."

"Nah, the others won't come within a mile of this place. Even the Master can't get them to do it. You've got a rep, sweet. That's what I like about you. You're the subject of cold sweat and frightened whispers. You're the Angel of Death, the way they tell it."

"Perhaps you should listen."

"I don't scare easy, pet. Your rep may have the others peeing their pants, but it's just a turn on for me."

"'There's death, there's glory and sod all else, right?'" Buffy murmured.

He smiled. "Yeah. You and me, we understand each other, don't we, Slayer?"

"Maybe."

"Drinking alone? You a closet alcoholic?" He grinned, then leaned forward, picked up her drink without so much as a by your leave and downed it in one swallow. His nose wrinkled in distaste. "Not much rum in that coke."

"Well, I'm not much of a drinker."

"Or very hospitable." He got up and prowled restlessly around the terrace while she watched him warily, glanced in at the open door to her living room. "Nice place you got here. How about inviting me in for a proper drink, Slayer?"

"I'm not that dumb, vampire."

He laughed and tapped mockingly at that invisible, impassable barrier that kept him from entering without her invitation.

"It was worth a try. Well, you could bring the drink out here, couldn't you?"

"I'm supposed to be drinking buddies with a demon now?"

"Know thine enemy. Aren't you curious, Slayer? I'm curious about you."

She was more than curious. She was hypnotized. William was human. This was the demon. But so much about him—his speech and looks and mannerisms —was Spike. It was so unfair!

"I've got some JD," she said reluctantly.

"Now you're talking."

She had to find out more, had to understand what exactly was happening here. She went in and collected a glass and the quarter-full bottle of Jack Daniels that stood with the rum and vodka and other assorted drinks she kept for visitors. Her own glass she refilled with plain coke, needing to keep her head and not take any chances. Not with this...creature that she had here.

"Won't need the glass," he remarked as she set everything down on the terrace table.

"Let's try for a little class, shall we?"

He laughed, poured himself a shot, then saluted her mockingly with the glass before sipping at it.

"So. How do you come to be in Rome?" she asked carefully, settling herself against the edge of the table rather than sitting down in a chair, so that she would be ready and on her feet if he jumped her.

He shrugged, on the move again, quartering the terrace restlessly in that leopard prowl, looking every inch the predator that he was. "No idea."

"You really mean that, don't you? And you didn't know your name before I said it."

He looked around at her, the points of his fangs showing. "How did you know it? How do you know me?"

"I don't. You just look like someone I used to know."

He was watching her intently, his lids down and his eyes dark and dangerous behind them. "That's an evasion."

"Is it?"

"Oh, yeah. I can tell."

"How?" she challenged. "You don't know me."

"I know you."

"You just met me."

"Doesn't matter. I know you. You tell me how and why."

"I've got no answers for you."

"You've got answers. You're just not sharing them." He reached out, his fingers shaped into claws, and ran them through her hair strongly enough to pull her head back. "Pretty hair."

She jerked away. "Threats don't work on me, vampire."

"Wasn't a threat." With that deliberate sensuality so familiar that it made her catch her breath, his tongue suddenly curled against the edge of his teeth. "Just an observation. Which might be worth following up."

"Don't even go there," she said flatly and hurriedly, recognizing that glint in his eye.

"Is that a challenge?"

"Oh, no, you don't!" Buffy exclaimed. "That's not a challenge and don't you take it as one! As if you need excuses to cause trouble," she muttered, exasperated.

"Sounds like you know me."

They eyed each other warily.

"Why don't you just tell me?" he said. "Why all this pussyfooting around?"

"Because I don't know anything."

He gave her a justifiably disbelieving look. "Then speculate."

"On what data? Tell me what you remember and maybe we can go from there."

He frowned, thinking about it. "Nothing much. Woke up in the Colosseo district, is all. Vamps found me, knew I was a stranger to Rome, took me to the Master. SOP for an unaligned vamp passing through a Master's territory. Either you leave or you become a minion or you duel to the death or you bargain for a _pax_." He gave her a mocking smile. "That's like a green card, yeah? I chose _pax_."

"Anything before that?"

"Can't remember."

"Try."

She could see him struggling against some block either traumatically induced or deliberately placed in his mind.

"Light. So bright. Like the heart of the sun. Flames. Burning. It hurt. Was I caught in the sun? It felt like the sun." He shook his head. Creases had formed between the strongly marked brows. His hand lifted, fingertips pressing hard between his eyes. "Then...some place vibrating with power. Like standing in the middle of an electrical field. Some empty place all green and shining like an emerald."

"The amulet?" she murmured almost to herself. "Were you caught in the amulet? That would make sense."

He wasn't listening. His gaze was turned inward. "Went right through me, those vibrations. Like hitting some giant tuning fork. You can feel it, hear it. Humming in your bones, in the cells of your body. All that power. Couldn't see anything, feel anything but green fire. Singing fire shaking me apart..." He flung around suddenly, thrusting it all away with a slash of his hand. "I forget!"

"Spike..."

"Yes. Spike. That's me. That's what matters. Know that now. Don' know why I thought different. The rest, all the ifs and whys and buts you humans worry about, they're meaningless. Irrelevant."

"Don't you want to remember?"

"Why? What's the point? The past doesn't exist. It's gone. The future doesn't exist. It hasn't come. Only the now exists."

And that was the demon talking. Time was meaningless to an immortal being. In the endless flow of their burning, blood-splattered dream, it was always the present.

"I exist. I am!" he flung at her. "That's what's important. That's all that matters."

"Okay."

They would have to look elsewhere for answers. Neither William nor Spike knew what had happened or why. William didn't know anything had happened at all. Spike didn't care.

The tension in his face was gone now that he had decided that reasons why didn't matter, his past relegated into oblivion behind him. He had come to terms with himself, that momentary impulse of half-remembered humanity thrust aside along with the unwanted memories. He was all vampire once more, all demon.

But that demon had been part of the Spike who had sacrificed himself in the Hellmouth. She couldn't kill him.

Even though it was her duty. She should kill him. What Willow had said was true.

"You're feeding."

She hadn't meant to say that aloud. He gave her a scornful glance.

"Yeah, sure. Don't you? So I drink blood once a day and you eat three squares of meat and veg. What's the diff? We all need sustenance. What's a little blood between friends?"

"We're not friends, demon. And people dying is not a little thing!"

"Who's dying? Way I recall it, I haven't killed anyone."

"What?"

"Sure I feed. But they're all still wandering around. A little weak from blood loss, yeah, but on their feet. They'll be okay after a couple of days."

Her jaw had dropped. He looked at her and laughed.

"You look cute with your mouth open like that, Slayer."

"But..."

"We don't have to kill, y'know." He shrugged tolerantly. "Or maybe you don't know. Don't seem to need much. A pint, is all. They give that much to the Red Cross blood clinics, don't they? I'm full after that."

She was staring at him, her brain whirling with two many contradictory ideas. He tilted his head to one side, crossed his eyes at her and let his mouth hang open in a deliberately idiotic expression. Then he dropped it and snickered.

"The way you look, Slayer! Why is it so surprising?"

"I've never heard of a vamp going without the kill!"

"Aah, humans are too easy. A kill like that's no fun at all." He grinned at her. "Now Slayers..."

"I thought we'd get to that."

"Slayer blood. I wonder what that's like."

"You're never going to find out."

"Is that a challenge?" His gaze dropped to where the pulse beat in the hollow of her throat. "They say it's an aphrodisiac."

He was prowling around her and she turned to face him, not wanting him at her back. The demon was volatile and unpredictable, and he hadn't said how long the truce would last. He could call it off any second. They circled each other, he amused and she wary. The beginning steps of the long dance that was new to him, but oh so familiar to her.

"This is hot, Slayer, dancing with you like this." His eyelids dropped, the blue eyes darkening as his pupils widened and turned intent. "Makes me think of other things we could be doing. Other dances."

"Hey!"

"Forbidden, is it? But that makes it all the more tempting." His glance swept her lingeringly from head to toe, and she felt it like a touch, like a hand sliding sensuously down her from her lips to her feet. "You're hot, Slayer. Not only the dance. You too. Golden girl. What would you be like in bed? Golden hair spread out on the pillow. Golden limbs spread for the taking. Heat instead of coolness. All that power and strength."

Her breath shook in her mouth. "Demon..."

"Yeah. Demon. But haven't you too wondered what that would be like? How a demon could pleasure you?"

Oh, but she knew. And she wanted it. So badly. But this wasn't Spike. Hadn't she learned with William? Neither he nor this creature tempting her was Spike.

"That's enough!" she said and turned hurriedly towards the door to her apartment.

He caught her before she reached it, his vampire speed getting him past her to block her way before she could prevent it. She had forgotten how fast he could move.

"Just a taste?" he mocked and took her mouth with his.

Unlike William, no hesitation, no gentle consideration. This was a thorough invasion, demanding pleasure and giving it at the same time. Her whole body flared involuntarily, yielded to the hard grip that crushed her to him and bent her back over the iron bar of his arm.

He was the demon. But it was Spike's mouth insistent on hers, Spike's tongue delving wickedly into every corner of her mouth, Spike's chest and stomach and hips hard and imperative against hers. She had wanted it too long, needed so desperately to have him back in her arms again. She was on fire. She was burning.

Her whole body thrilled and sang and melted to his, under that lightning bolt of passion that turned her insides to molten lava. Her arms closed fiercely upon his back, nails digging into the leather of his duster. Her mouth twisted savagely upon his, eating him the same way he was eating her, meeting his violence with her own.

This was known, this was familiar, this violence and heat and ferocity. She drowned in it, clinging to him. Hadn't they always ravaged each other this way, the lash of desire and conflict thrusting them far beyond gentleness? Her neck hurt from the pressure of his mouth driving her head back; their grips would have broken bones on a human; but all she was aware of was the taste of his mouth and the slide and thrust of his tongue and the feel of his body against hers. So desperately desired.

So familiar, the rawness and violence and intensity that she had always fought, this darkness she never been able to resist—dangerous, drugging, honey-sweet and so wrong. But the laughter was different, that wicked enjoyment so unlike Spike's desperation. The blue eyes above her glittered with amusement and triumph.

"Yeah," he whispered against her mouth. "Oh, yeah. I knew it. All fire, you are."

"Oh, God!"

She came back to herself in horror, thrust at him with all her force. He laughed as he let himself be pushed away.

"You liked it."

"You're the demon!" How could she have forgotten that?

"So I am. Have to think about it, do you? Well, that makes sense. All these shoulds and shouldn'ts that we demons never have to worry about. But why do I get the feeling you're not unfamiliar with the dark side?"

She was all too familiar with it.

"You've danced with darkness before, haven't you, pet? And you've liked it."

But that darkness had been her own. She had let herself fall into the dark. Spike on the other hand had been struggling upwards into the light.

"No more," she said forcefully and he shrugged. His eyes were all blue light, very clear and intent.

"Later then. But we will dance, Slayer. One way or the other."

He put one hand on the balustrade and vaulted over. She looked down and saw him land lightly on the grass, lift a hand in mocking salute, then flash away into the darkness.

'Oh, God!' she thought in horrified, long-delayed realization. 'It's the demon side that turns me on!'

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"He isn't killing people?" Willow looked poleaxed.

"That's what he says. And he didn't care whether I believed him or not. 'Oh, I'm full after a pint and killing humans is no fun at all,'" Buffy paraphrased with exasperation, copying Spike's careless shrug. "Like it's nothing important. He was amused when it threw me."

"It throws me too. It doesn't make sense."

"Nothing makes sense! But I believe him. Why should he lie? Vamps have no compunctions about killing."

"_Not_ killing is what they would be embarrassed about." Willow shook her head in bewilderment. "I've never heard of a vamp not draining. Except for Angel of course and we know his reason."

"Yeah. All that guilt now that he's got a soul, plus the wanting redemption. Angel's so serious about it, he won't even drink bagged human blood, just animal." Buffy handed Willow a coke, then sat down on her couch to sip at her own. "This demon-Spike hasn't got a soul and doesn't give a damn about redemption."

"Well, why would he? He's already been redeemed. William's shanshued."

"Yeah, but he's not William. He's the demon. Why is he around?"

Except to drive her crazy, she thought bitterly. 'You need some monster in your man,' Spike had said. She had rejected that violently. But he had been right, hadn't he? That monster was what she wanted. She bit her lip, finally facing that.

"Something happened in that amulet," she said. "Spike said he felt torn apart. By the amulet? The PTB? What? But more importantly, why?"

"I need to do more research," Willow nodded.

"Can you make it priority, Will? I know Giles wants the base set up, but you've got most of it done already and with all the implications, this really seems crucial."

"Especially if he starts killing SITs," muttered Willow and Buffy winced.

"If he starts doing that, I'll dust him."

Willow looked at her intently to see if she meant it, then nodded abruptly. "All righty then."

There was a agitated tattoo of knocks on the door. Buffy and Willow exchanged startled glances, then Buffy got up to answer it.

"Giles!" she exclaimed when Giles almost fell in the door. "What are you doing here?"

Giles recovered his balance, set his suitcase down and pushed his glasses back into place with one forefinger.

"Xander called with a...strange story." He looked from Buffy to Willow. "I came right over. I had to find out...Is it true?"

"If you mean do we have a William who's human, yes, it's true," said Buffy wryly.

"Good Lord!" Giles fell into an armchair. "I need a drink."

"I've got some scotch."

Buffy pulled out the bottle of scotch she had bought just in case Giles turned up in Rome. Willow helpfully brought over a glass while she was opening it.

"Should we tell him about the demon?" she murmured quietly in Buffy's ear.

Buffy shook her head violently. "God, no! He'll have a stroke. Then he and Xander will get out the crossbows. Not yet, Will, please. Not until we figure out what's going on."

"Okay."

Giles had taken off his glasses and was polishing them. Buffy handed him his drink, then lifted the suitcase he had dropped.

"Are you staying for a while, Giles? Shall I put your suitcase in the guest room?"

Giles dismissed that as unimportant with a distracted wave of his hand. "I'll stay at the College. There should be room there. You say it's really William?"

"It seems like it."

"He seems like the person he would have been if he had been born in this day and age," explained Willow. "I don't know how much further we can go to prove that. We've asked him questions, but how do we check the answers? All of it has to be taken at face value. I mean, identity tests usually depend on things like fingerprints and DNA and stuff. We've got nothing to compare William's to."

"I have to meet him! You're sure he's human?"

"I did a scan. He's human. I'm absolutely sure of that."

"Does he have a soul?" Giles leaned forward urgently in his chair.

"He has a soul. I used..." Willow dug around in the little pouch attached to her belt. "Yeah, I've still got it. Here." She withdrew the Augustian denarius from the pouch and passed it to Giles. "I used the 'Revelations' spell from the Modus book. I placed it on that denarius and gave it to him. It flared green."

"The way it should if he did have a soul."

"Right. Give me a moment here." She muttered something rapidly under her breath. "Okay, it's activated now. _Te patefac._"

In Giles' hand, the coin flared green for a second, then went back to bronze.

"Looks like you've got a soul, Giles," said Buffy dryly.

"I accept that it works," muttered Giles, staring at the coin. "But then Spike had a soul before he died. The question is how did he resurrect? And turn human!"

"As near as we can figure out so far, he was caught in the amulet and something happened in there. We don't know what. Willow's trying to find out. You can help with the research, Giles, now that you're here."

"Yes, of course I will. Yes." He rubbed a hand across his eyes. "But...why?"

"Maybe that death in the Hellmouth redeemed him, Giles," said Willow. "He saved all of us, saved the world from the First Evil. Maybe someone thought he earned it."

"And rewarded Spike with the Shanshu." There was a strange look on Giles' face and Buffy wondered whether he was thinking of the way he had conspired with Robin Wood to kill Spike before the battle. "Incredible. I have to meet this William. I have to know..."

Buffy glanced at the time. "He should be back from work soon. He lectures at St. Mark's which is connected in some way to the AUR."

"Lectures..."

Willow was grinning a little. "He's kind of an Oxford don type now, Giles. You're gonna love it."

"Good Lord." Giles sounded more ready to take affront than to love it.

Buffy opened the front door a couple of inches and left it ajar. "We should hear him coming up the stairs. Willow is probably the best one to fill you in on what's been happening."

Excitedly, Willow did and also brought him up to date on the renovations at the College, while Buffy kept an ear tuned to footsteps coming up the stairs. After a couple of false alarms, William finally did turn up about twenty minutes later. He was wearing tweeds again, but this time with a cable-knit sweater-vest over the button-down shirt and tie, instead of the previous waistcoat. To her surprise, he was smoking.

"I didn't know you smoked," she remarked and he turned quickly, then stepped away from the stairs when he saw who was speaking to him.

"I'm trying to quit. Did you...want me for something?"

"I just wanted to know if you'd like to come in for a drink."

He smiled. "I'd love to."

He stubbed the cigarette out on the sole of his shoe, glanced around, then dropped the stub into his pocket for lack of an ashtray. That was a very William thing to do, Buffy thought; Spike would have just carelessly flipped it away. She stepped back to let him come in, but he stopped short outside the door when he saw Giles jerking to his feet and staring at him.

"You've got company," he said diffidently. "I wouldn't like to intrude."

"It's only Giles," said Willow, waving him in from the couch. "He's a friend of ours."

"I guess you could call him our boss," said Buffy lightly. "He runs our, um, head office in England while I take care of the Rome one. Come on in, William."

"They tell me you're with St. Mark's," said Giles as they shook hands. Buffy saw him glance down involuntarily in surprise at the warmth of William's hand, then he hurriedly covered that by a nod at the briefcase William was carrying. "Papers to mark?"

William nodded ruefully. "A pile of them. They'll probably take all night and I'm not looking forward to getting down to it."

"So come and shmooze for a while before you start," said Buffy, taking his case from him and setting it in the hall closet beside Giles' suitcase. "What would you like to drink? Willow and I are having cokes and Giles is having a scotch. But perhaps you would prefer tea."

"Scotch, please, if you don't mind," said William and smiled a little at Buffy's surprised glance. "It's been a long day."

"It's a very good Glenfiddich," said Giles. He was fumbling something out of his coat pocket as he sat back down in his armchair. Looking over his shoulder, Buffy saw that it was a small steel mirror.

"Then definitely scotch, thank you," said William, sitting down on the couch and in the process missing the way Giles slanted the mirror towards him and peered at his reflection. Which was indisputably there.

Giles looked up and saw Buffy watching him, amused, over the drink she was pouring. He flushed a little, but refused to back off.

"I hear Willow showed you her find," he said and tossed the Augustian denarius at William who caught it automatically. "_Te patefac_," muttered Giles under his breath.

The coin flared green.

"Did you see...?" said William, startled, staring at it.

"Oh, sorry!" said Giles hurriedly. "I must have flashed light into your eyes. How clumsy of me!"

He held up the mirror. William relaxed and laughed.

"For a moment I thought it was the coin. But of course it wouldn't be."

"Have some snacks," said Buffy, hastily setting out a dish of salted nuts on the coffee table, her face turned so that he wouldn't see her scowl at Giles.

"Well, I had to know," mumbled Giles under his breath, flushing.

"For Pete's sake, be careful," Buffy muttered back. "He's _tabula rasa_ right now. Let's not mess that up."

"Hey, try these," Willow was saying to distract William's attention, shaking a different type of nut into the dish.

Buffy reached for one, then warned by the mischievous look on Willow's face, only licked at it lightly. She winced as even that small taste burned her tongue. It was violently spicy-hot. Giles, who had tossed one unwarily into his mouth, choked over it.

"Willow, that was mean!" she exclaimed, but couldn't help laughing.

Willow grinned. "Couldn't resist."

"Got it from that East Indian place on the corner, did you?" said William, happily crunching away.

"Dear God!" said Giles, staring. "How can you stomach that?"

"Oh, I enjoy strong tastes. Buy from them all the time. My mother thought I was delicate, but I've always had a cast-iron tummy. Had to have one with the kind of stodge we used to tuck into at school."

Giles shuddered. "I remember."

"Especially on a dare." He tilted his head, smiling, when Giles winced. "That hit a nerve, did it? Care to share the story?"

"All that needs to be said is that I do not have a cast iron stomach." Giles hurriedly changed the subject. "Willow mentioned that you're a Balliol man."

William grinned, but accepted the change of tack and answered all his questions with good humor and no suspicion. Giles knew Oxford and England far better than Willow did and his probing was way more penetrating and detailed. But if he was hoping to catch William out on something, he was disappointed.

"Someone did a good job on his background," he muttered to Buffy and Willow on the pretext of refreshing his drink.

"We think it's his own updated," Buffy murmured back. "It sounds completely believable, doesn't it?"

"Yes, quite. Sound man," said Giles approvingly and Buffy and Willow glanced at each other, amused. It wasn't surprising at all that Giles felt at ease with William.

There was another knock on the door and Buffy went to answer it. Most likely Xander, she thought. But it wasn't.

"Angel! What are you doing here?"

"Xander called." He stared past her at William sitting talking to Giles and Willow. "My God, it's true! He's shanshued!"

"Keep your voice down." Buffy stepped hastily into the corridor, Angel taking a quick pace back to give her room. "He doesn't know."

"How can he not know?"

"They've given him a fresh start. His memory's wiped. All he knows is that he's William Knight and the backstory that goes with that."

Angel frowned. "Knight? That wasn't his name."

"Oh? What was his name?"

"I can't remember. It's been over a hundred years and vamps don't use last names. I can't even remember my own. But I used to know his and it wasn't Knight. I'm sure of that."

"Interesting. I guess they didn't want any connections at all to his real past. Maybe they called him that because he was Dru's knight."

Angel was glowering at William. She had left the front door open when she stepped into the hallway and he had a clear view.

"He's human. I can sense it. Why? Why him?"

Buffy gave him a wry look. "When you're the one who wanted it?"

"Well, yes." Angel looked a little embarrassed, but defiant. She could feel the anger smouldering behind his grim face. "Spike never wanted it. He didn't give a damn about all the deaths, about making reparation. He didn't care about redeeming himself. Redemption meant nothing to him!"

"No, it didn't. But maybe he earned it anyway." She looked through the doorway at William's innocent, oblivious face. "I don't know how these things work, Angel, but...Look, every life you save is on the credit side of the ledger, right? As they should be. But why are you doing it? For those lives or for the credit? For that reward at the end."

Angel looked hurt. "Buffy..."

"I'm not trying to lessen your achievements, really I'm not. It's just that Spike didn't do it for the reward. He fully expected to die and go to Hell. He sacrificed himself for me. And literally saved billions of lives while doing it. With no thought or hope of reward."

Angel was silenced.

"Unconditional love," said Buffy under her breath. Spike's love had always been unconditional and she had never seen that.

Angel was staring at her. "What was that you said about Spike when I brought you that amulet? That he was in your heart. What did you mean by that?"

Now he asked that. When it was too late. Maybe if he had asked it back then, it would have made her think about it, what she had meant, what she had really been feeling.

"It doesn't matter. He's gone now."

"Is he?" Angel looked past her at the white-haired figure in tweeds.

"That's not Spike. That's William. Come and meet him."

She led the way into the flat. Angel came automatically after her, then was brought up short at that invisible barrier that would allow no vamp to enter a person's home uninvited.

"Oh, sorry! Come in, Angel." She gave a rueful smile to Willow and Giles who both had startled expressions on their faces. "Look who's here. William, this is a friend of ours from the States. His name's Angel."

"A pleasure," said William, rising politely to his feet. But he didn't look pleased. He looked wary, most likely because of the scowl with which Angel was regarding him.

"Isn't this nice?" said Willow a little wildly, catching not only that but the stony look on Giles' face as well. Angel had not been one of Giles' favorite people ever since Angelus had killed Jenny Calendar. And now he was CEO of Wolfram and Hart which Giles considered Evil Incorporated. "All friends together."

"Quite," said Giles with no expression at all.

William glanced at him while shaking hands with Angel. His gaze flicked to Buffy, then returned to assess Angel thoughtfully.

Then he frowned. "I didn't think it was that cold outside," he said, looking down at Angel's hand.

"He's got low blood pressure," said Buffy hurriedly. "Something to drink, Angel? Scotch?"

"Thanks."

"Sit, both of you," she said over her shoulder as she reached for another glass. "No need to be formal."

The two men sat down on opposite ends of the couch, studying each other covertly. There was a tension in the atmosphere that hadn't been there before. Angel might give the Easter Island stone faces a run for their money, but his eyes were cold and his resentment clear. Spike had beaten him by being the one to shanshu and Angel couldn't completely hide his bitterness.

Buffy brought him his drink, then would have moved away. But Angel drew her down to sit on the couch between him and William, his arm around her shoulders encouraging her to lean against his side. It was a possessive move and designed to make that plain to William. He was staking a claim. She saw the flicker of William's eyes noting it.

She disengaged herself and shifted slightly, leaning back against the couch equidistant from both of them.

"So," said William. "What do you do, uh, Angel? Do you represent the American side of their business?"

"Business?"

"No, Angel's not connected to us at all," Willow said hastily. "He heads up this law firm in L.A."

"Oh, you're a lawyer."

"No, I just...run things."

"I see." William's brows had lifted. Well, it did sound strange.

"Xander mentioned that you're a lecturer," Angel said stiffly.

"That's right."

"Latin and Greek studies. Don't know much about that myself."

"No, of course not," said William dryly.

"And a poet, Xander said."

Buffy knew Angel was trying to find out how much like Spike William was, but William took it as a deliberate slur suggesting that he was bookish while Angel was a man of action. And who knew, maybe Angel meant it that way. There were a lot of undercurrents going on. Buffy glanced at Willow and Giles who were both looking edgy.

The three of them had been at ease with William, once they'd gotten over the shock of how much he looked like Spike. They had accepted that he was a different person and the evening had been pleasant so far, all four of them enjoying each others' company. But things had changed once Angel arrived. He couldn't stop seeing William as Spike. Or maybe what he was seeing was that vulnerable young man that Dru had brought home like some stray dog a hundred and twenty years ago and whom Angelus had harassed and tried to dominate for so long.

Perhaps it was unconscious, but Angel was trying to do the same thing again, trying to be the dominant one while stressing the fact that he was on familiar terms with them, that he had history with them and with Xander, was part of the inner circle, was family where William was the outsider. William, as intelligent and sensitive as Spike had always been, caught on fast. His eyes narrowed and where he had met Giles' careful probing with friendliness and open answers, he suddenly became curt and resistive.

"So you don't have tenure yet," Angel remarked. "But you're young, aren't you? There's plenty of time."

William might be diffident and self-effacing, but he knew when he was being condescended to.

"I'm in no hurry. I might remain in Rome, I might not. I haven't decided yet." He looked Angel over expressionlessly. "CEO for a law firm? What are the qualifications for that?"

Angel didn't have any qualifications for the post; he'd been handed it as a gift by Wolfram and Hart for reasons unknown and possibly shady. Giles snickered under his breath.

"'A hit, a palpable hit'," he muttered to Willow and to Buffy who had left the couch on the pretext of refilling her glass. "Angel's not going to like that."

Angel didn't. "I do the job," he said stiffly.

"Of course," said William with the kind of politeness that said he didn't believe it one bit.

Giles sniggered. "A touch of the old Adam there. Who'd have thought it of William? Or is that a tinge of authentic Spike coming through?"

Buffy flicked the back of her fingers at his arm. "Careful. Keep your voice down. He'll hear."

But Angel and William were too occupied with their poorly camouflaged hostility to notice. Angel kept probing, but William had gone into passive-resistance mode and blocked every effort with a bland courtesy that contrived to suggest that Angel was a boor for persisting. 'Vulgarian,' said the flick of his glance.

"I must be going," he said at last and smiled politely at Buffy. "All those papers to mark."

"That's a pity." She followed him to the door and slid open the hall closet door for him to retrieve his briefcase. "I thought you might stay longer. I hoped you were enjoying our company."

'Not this company,' said his glance at Angel.

"You've been very kind. But I mustn't impose on you any longer."

"I liked having you here."

"Did you? That's nice." But the wry look in his eyes said that he knew that he had been cut out. He had a rival—if not Angel, still someone else—and he sensed that and was resigned to it. "Yes. Well. I suppose we'll see each other around."

"William..."

He smiled faintly, gave her an oddly formal bow of the head and left.

"What was all that dancing about for?" snapped Angel as the door closed behind him. "He's acting as if he's got something to hide."

"Maybe he didn't like being grilled," said Giles dryly and Angel glowered at him.

"I wasn't..."

"You were being bloody hamhanded and he took exception to it. Can't really blame him. I would have too."

"How to win friends and influence enemies. Not. I have to agree with Giles," Buffy sighed. "You made it plain you didn't think much of him."

"Well, I never did think much of William," muttered Angel. "He was always such a useless wimp."

"That wimp grew into Spike."

Angel glared. "This one won't."

"I don't know about that," said Giles. "I'm a little puzzled by the changes I'm detecting."

Angel looked up, surprised. "What changes?"

"Well, he's not exactly the fluffy poet I expected," said Willow. "I thought he'd have been a real geek. But this one seems to know what he's doing, at least in his job."

"Well, they couldn't make him a wealthy Victorian gentleman of leisure, with nothing to do but drift through society and write his godawful poems," said Angel irritably. "People like that no longer exist in the modern age."

"That's my whole point," said Giles. "What other changes have been made? Willow, we need to do some research."

Willow nodded. "Both of us."

"I've got Wes looking into it too," said Angel. "Wolfram and Hart has access to material that you don't."

"The thing is," said Willow, "there might not be any information anywhere. This could be just a one-off by the PTB, a reward for Spike with nothing like it happening before or happening again."

"There's got to be something," muttered Giles with his perfect faith in the ability of research to solve anything. "There's that Mutatis Mutandis book or..."

He and Willow and Angel discussed it for some time while Buffy sat frowning down at her hands, thinking that there was some element that they were all missing.

"I'll be hanging around until we know what's going on," Angel was saying. "Wolfram and Hart's Rome office will find a place for me to stay."

"You can stay at the College if you like," suggested Giles. "I'd prefer that Wolfram and Hart not be party to this, even so far as finding you lodging. Does anyone other than you and Wes know why you're here?"

"No. Xander called and I just came. Wes will keep me advised if anything happens that needs my attention. I've rented a car. Can I give you and Willow a ride back to the College?"

"I came on my Vespa," said Willow who had developed a fondness for Rome's ubiquitous motorscooters. "But I'll tag along on your tail. Coming down to see us off, Buff?"

"No, I, um, have something to do."

Buffy had caught a glimpse of motion on the balcony. Out there in the darkness a shadow moved, moonlight glinting on platinum hair. She prayed Giles and Angel wouldn't notice it. She waved the three of them off with relief, kicked the door shut with her heel and was flinging open the door to the balcony a second later.

"What are you doing here? Go away!"

"Matey with everyone else but me, are you? I could use some of that booze you've been handing out so freely."

"Are you crazy? Don't you know they'll be hunting you down with crossbows if they see you?"

"Like I care." His eyes were narrowed and glittering dangerously. "Who is he?"

"What?"

"That was a vamp you had in there, Slayer. Or didn't you know that? What are you doing being so chummy with a vamp?"

"Angel's different."

"Angel. That's a girl's name. He a poofter?"

"No, he's not! His name's Angelus. Go away, Spike. I don't want to talk to you."

"Don't care what you want. I'm in the mood for some conversation."

"Spike..."

"That redhaired bint, she's from your College. Seen her around. But the two blokes are new. Who's the toff with the glasses and the receding hairline? Your Da?"

"That's Giles. He's my Watcher and closer to me than my real Dad. He's only going to be in Rome for a while and if you hurt him, Spike, I swear I'll dust you!"

"Wouldn't bother. He's like the redhead, a human," he said contemptuously, then fixed her with an accusing stare. "But that other wanker's not. He's a vamp. And you let him into your flat."

"Angel's special. He's on the side of light."

"Oh, yeah, su-ure," he drawled and smirked at her. "Well, if you want to believe that, Slayer..."

"I don't believe so. I know so. He's got a soul."

"A vamp with a soul? Doesn't happen."

"It happened. He was cursed with one a hundred years ago."

"You pulling my chain?" He made a disgusted face when she shook her head.. "Now that really is twisted! A soul! Can't think of anything more wrong."

"I guess you wouldn't."

"Don't give me that disapproving look. It's flat against the natural order of things, Slayer, and you know it."

"Oh, and you like order?"

He grinned involuntarily. "Nah, I like chaos."

"That I can believe, demon."

"That's what I am. But I suppose he's not, this appropriately named wanker. Can't be a demon if he's on the side of the angels. Big whoop."

"Chaotic enough for you?"

"Oh, yeah. Makes me wanna hurl, but that's beside the point." He was watching her intently, a little scornful smile on his lips. "And you say he's not a poofter either."

"No."

"Know that as a fact, do you?"

"Yes!"

"Had you, has he?"

He caught her fist just before it slammed into his jaw.

"I'll take that as a yes," he said and laughed.

"_Demon!_" she flung at him in fury and ripped her hand free. "Get out of here and leave me alone or I will stake you!"

"Worst thing you can think to call me, innit? A demon. But demons turn you on, don't they, cutie?"

She glared at him, gritting her teeth.

"I could make you forget him, Slayer." He wasn't laughing now. His eyes were intent, intense. And it was Spike's face looking at her, Spike's breath on her mouth, Spike's body brushing hers. "There's something between us. I can feel it. Heat. So much heat."

They were matched in strength and she could have pushed him away if she had wanted to. But she didn't want to. She wanted him. Her nails cut into her palms, trying to keep from just grabbing him. It was just an illusion. He wasn't Spike. He was the demon. But for just a little while she would be able to delude herself that it was Spike.

"You could just take what you wanted, couldn't you?" she whispered. She almost wished that he would. "Want, take, have. That's what demons do, isn't it? Why don't you?"

"Fuck you or kill you or both. Yeah, I could. That would be standard operational procedure. But what's between us, it's not standard, is it? It's something else. It's this thing you're not telling me about. Want you to come to me, Slayer. Want the assent. That would be the real victory."

"You arrogant..."

"Is he your type, Slayer? Don't think much of your taste. He what gets your juices flowing? Don' know about that though, watching you in there. Didn't seem that enthused by the looks of it. But you're enthused with me, aren't you?"

Her fists clenched. He looked down and laughed.

"Yeah, hit me, Slayer. Give it to me good. You know you want to." His eyes were alight with laughter and provocation. "Might end up against that wall. Or on the floor. Doing what we both want—either killing each other or fucking each other blind."

"No," she whispered.

"You know you want to dance."

He had said that to her once before, in the alley behind the Bronze years ago. No, Spike had. And what had she said?

"'Say, it's true. Say I do want to...'" she breathed and didn't realize she had spoken the words aloud until she saw his eyes flare.

But this was the demon and the gleeful anticipation in those eyes was light years away from the vulnerability and the terrible hope that had been in Spike's eyes when she had said those words before. All her anger drained away in a surge of grief. She caught her breath in pain and her fists unclenched and fell lax at her sides.

Maybe it wouldn't have hurt her so badly if the comparisons hadn't been so sharp right at the moment. If William hadn't been here less than half an hour ago—William who was human, but wasn't Spike. And here was the demon and he had all those vamp abilities that turned her on, all the unique characteristics of speech and attitude that should have been Spike and yet wasn't.

She had been wrong both ways. The human hadn't turned her on and she hadn't wanted him. The demon did turn her on, but though she desired him, he still wasn't what she wanted. What she wanted was that unique combination of violence and tenderness. Not the killer or the poet, but the killer _and _the poet; that specific, complex, multi-faceted personality that was Spike.

"God, I've been a fool!" she whispered.

She turned blindly and ran into her living room, needing to get away from him. It didn't hurt her to be around William because he so clearly wasn't Spike. But the demon, so like him and yet still not him, cut her heart to shreds.

"Don't you walk out on me, Slayer!" he said furiously behind her. She heard his hands slam angrily against the posts of the door.

"Leave me alone, demon!"

"Buffy!" And the urgency of his tone, his voice saying her name in that breathless, intense way, went straight through her like a knife. It was the way Spike had always said it. It hurt so much to hear it.

"Don't!"

But when did that ever stop Spike? He caught her before she got halfway across the room, his hands pulling her around to face him. The blaze of the living room's lamps stressed the intensity of his face, the way all the bones were standing out hard and sharp with strain.

"Slayer, wait!"

"No!" she said violently. "Spike, I can't! You're not..."

Then it hit her.

"You're inside!" she gasped in shock.

"What?" he said blankly.

"You're inside the house!"

It hadn't occurred to him either until then. He turned his head to stare in surprise at the open door to the balcony. Then he started to smile.

"Well, hey, you invited me in? Then it's okay you invited him if you invited me as well."

"But...I didn't!"

"Slayer," he said patiently. "You must have. Because I'm a vamp and I can't come in unless you say I can come in."

"But..."

The front door that Buffy had forgotten to lock opened and Willow walked in, then stopped dead in shock.

"Spike?"

Spike flung up his arms. "Another one who knows me! Do I have a rep or something?"

"Oh, yeah," said Buffy. "You should ask around."

"OhmiGod, look at him!" Willow was gasping.

Spike grinned at her. "Hey, Red. Seen you 'round the College. You're Willow, right?"

"Yuh." Willow gaped at him. "And you're...and you're...You really are!"

"Well, I told you, didn't I?" said Buffy, a little exasperated.

"Yeah, but that's different from actually seeing it. Do the vamp thingy," she said to Spike.

"Willow," sighed Buffy, but Spike laughed and went into gameface obligingly, ridges, fangs, yellow eyes, the whole deal.

"Right. This one's a vamp," said Willow.

"This one?" Spike shook off the gameface and frowned at her. "What do you mean, this one? Is there another me hanging around somewhere?"

Willow opened her mouth, then saw Buffy glaring at her. "Uh, not exactly."

Spike gave her a look. "Gee, can you vague it up a little more?"

"You don't have to mock our phraseology," muttered Willow.

"Kinda getting to the end of my rope here. Why don't you people stop playing games and just tell me flat out what's going on?"

"Because we don't know what's going on," snapped Buffy.

"But why not tell him about Wi...?" began Willow, then stopped short as Buffy waved a hand wildly to silence her.

"Because vamps—especially him!—have awfully direct ways of solving problems and I really don't want anyone to get eaten because the evil twin doesn't like duplicates."

"Oh! Right!" Willow thought that over. "Yeah, could have some unfortunate results."

"Am I supposed to not understand that?" muttered Spike.

"Do you?" asked Willow with interest.

"That there's a doppelgänger around, yeah, but that doesn't get me very far. Getting bloody sick of mysteries."

Buffy glowered. "Ya think?" She glanced at Willow. "What are you doing back here anyway? I thought you were going to the College with Giles and Angel."

"Well, I was, but I saw you were looking kinda funny when we left, so I thought I'd let them go on ahead and I'd come back to find out what was wrong. I really didn't expect to find you'd invited a vamp into the house."

Buffy flung up her hands. "And that's another mystery! I didn't!"

"You must have."

"Well, I didn't and I want you to do that spell that disinvites him."

"That's not very friendly," said Spike reproachfully.

"Yeah, well, I'd rather not wake up to find my throat being torn out."

"Wouldn't do that."

"Sure you wouldn't."

"No, really. That's for later." He grinned suddenly. "Rather do something else first. Might."

"Don't want to wake up to that either." She gave him a twisted smile and he laughed.

"You'd like it, Slayer. Guaranteed." Then his brows snapped together. "What about that Angel git? You gonna keep me out, but let him in?"

"Uh..."

"Maybe that wanker and I should have a little discussion."

"No!" She bit her lip. "You're both going to be disinvited."

"Fair enough. Pity though," he muttered. "Didn't like his face. Might look a lot better when it's rearranged a little. Or dust."

"Hey!"

"Well, it would."

"You leave him alone."

He didn't say anything.

"Spike!"

"Oh, all right," he said sulkily. "As a favor to you."

"Your word? What am I saying?" she muttered. "Demons don't keep their word."

"I do," he retorted, offended.

"He does, you know," said Willow.

"Yes, but that was the other..." Buffy stopped short, staring at him.

"What?" he asked, surprised.

"It just hit me. Nah, it can't be. But you're sure not acting like a normal demon. No 'want, take, have.' No killing. The assent. So many anomalies...I just want to check something out. Here. Catch."

She scooped up the denarius that William had left lying on the coffee table and tossed it at him.

"_Te patefac_," she murmured as he caught it reflexively.

The coin flared green in his hand.

"Ai-yi-yi-yi-yi!" said Willow and fell into an armchair.

"_What?_" said Spike, really exasperated this time.

"Research!" exclaimed Buffy.

"On it!" Willow waved a feeble hand in acknowledgment. "Giles...?"

"No way! Not yet."

"Will somebody tell me what the bleeding hell is going on?" snarled Spike.

"Now that's the question," muttered Willow. She staggered to her feet and headed dazedly for the door. "Haven't got that disinvite spell memorized, Buffy, so it'll have to wait until tomorrow. Unless you want it tonight. I could find the book and come back..."

"No, tomorrow's fine." She lifted a brow at Spike. "Or are you planning on invading the place tonight?"

"Nah. No rush." He smirked at her. "Half the fun's in the anticipation."

"So glad to hear it."

"Are you glad?" His voice had dropped so that Willow, going out the front door and closing it behind her, wouldn't hear.

She wasn't. She wanted the choice taken out of her hands so that she didn't have to think and agonize, wanted a _fait accompli_ and he knew it. If she woke up in the middle of the night and found him on top of her, would she fight it?

"I'd like you to leave now," she said, holding open the door to the balcony, determinedly resisting that compromising thought.

"All right." But he didn't move, kept watching her.

His face had gone still, lips faintly compressed, his eyes very blue. She found her gaze lingering on the planes of his face, the beauty of it that she had always shut out before. That recklessness, that wicked, volatile mockery that had called to mind the lethal, dangerous Spike who had first come to Sunnydale was still there—the demon. But something else was there within the velvety black smoulder of his pupils, a softness that reminded her of the Spike he had turned into towards the end.

Had it been there all along and she hadn't seen it, shut it out as she had always shut him out? She had never really looked at Spike, the individual who had been her enemy and lover and champion, never in all the long years. And this being was at once known and unknown, an all too familiar stranger. She didn't even know what she was looking at now.

Cool fingertips slid down the side of her face, a caress. When had he moved? He was suddenly right in front of her. Too close. She should retreat. But the open door of the balcony was cold against her back and there was nowhere for her to go. Besides, she didn't want to.

His intent gaze was on her mouth. He bent his head slowly, giving her all the time in the world to protest or resist. She couldn't. She wanted it too much, wanted the taste of his mouth and the feel of his body against hers and those few exquisite moments of being able to pretend it was Spike even though it wasn't. Her mouth opened to him without a thought; her hands flew up from her sides to clench fiercely across his back.

They kissed and kissed again slowly, sensuously, mouths fused together, unable to break apart. She lost track of time, drowning in sensation, in the taste and feel and touch of him, in the memories, surrendered to those memories, never wanting it to end.

"Slayer," he said in an odd, suffocated voice. "Slayer."

She knew what that breathlessness meant. Vamps didn't need to breathe, but passion had always brought out that reflex in Spike, made him struggle for air as desperately as she. She knew she was affecting him as much as he was affecting her, and that knowledge racked the tension even tighter.

His weight was heavy upon her from chest to knee, pressing her against the door; his body was tautening, hardening, growing more urgent and demanding. She wanted to yield to that demand, her bones turning to water, her whole body going liquid.

"You're something else, Slayer," he muttered. "So hot. So bloody hot. You could burn me to ash."

She had.

She tore her mouth away, gasping for breath.

"No."

He wasn't Spike, wasn't William, wasn't even really the demon. She didn't know what he was.

"You mean not yet," he mocked. "Because we know it'll happen, don't we, Slayer?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, yes, it will." He was laughing at her. But the hands cradling her head, sliding through her hair, were oddly gentle, the lips that brushed hers sweet, coaxing not taking. "Maybe not tonight or even tomorrow night. But it will happen."

Could she let it? But what if he proved to be nothing but the demon? Could she dust him or stand by and let the others dust him? Endure watching him die again?

It would destroy her.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"Well, now we know why he's not eating people," said Buffy.

"The soul holding him back without his even knowing it." Willow set a fat, white, beeswax pillar candle on a saucer for lack of a proper holder and centered it on the coffee table. "Didn't he ever wonder why he wasn't killing people like the other vamps?"

"I think he did, but then he rationalized it. 'I'm full and humans aren't fun to kill'. But he knew it wasn't the way vamps usually act. He just wouldn't admit it, so he found another reason." Buffy grinned wryly. "Nice seeing him living in Egypt for once. I saw you and Giles and Angel wading through books today while I was training the SITs. Have you been able to find out anything yet?"

She had been wanting to ask Willow that all day. But, knowing how acute Angel's vamp hearing was, they had both been careful not to speak about the real problem anywhere in or near the College.

Willow shook her head. "_Nada._But we've still got tons of books to plow through."

"Did you tell them about...?"

"I didn't say anything about either demon-Spikes or souls." She stopped searching for the right page in the spellbook and looked up at Buffy. "Maybe we should tell them about him. Giles is beginning to give me funny looks because he's noticed that the books I've been going through are more about soul-having than transfigurations."

"Not yet, Will, please. Not until we have something more to tell them than just that he exists. We can't be sure how they'll react. Look at the way they're already freaking about William and I can't think of anyone more perfectly harmless. Tell them that there's two of them and the other one's a demon? Even the fact that he has a soul mightn't keep them from going postal and dusting him."

"I suppose. Here we go," said Willow, finally finding the incantation she wanted. "You sure you want to disinvite Angel as well?"

"Yeah." Buffy bit her lip. "I'll have to find some way to keep him from finding out though. I don't want to hurt his feelings."

Willow was watching her thoughtfully. "But you don't want to hurt the demon's feelings either?"

Buffy flushed.

"Does a demon have feelings, Buff?"

"Well, if Angel can, Spike can," muttered Buffy defensively. "Angel's a demon too, isn't he?"

"That's not what you would have said before."

"All those years of saying Spike has no feelings. Well, I was wrong, wasn't I? We all were!"

"So now you're trying to make up for that? He's not Spike, Buff."

"I don't know what he is! Find out for me, Will!"

"And fast," muttered Willow. She lit the candle. "Now then."

She read the incantation aloud carefully. The faint, pleasant, honey scent of the beeswax suddenly seemed to expand to permeate every room of the flat.

"_Fiat,_" said Willow at last and blew out the candle. "There. It's done."

"Thanks, Will." Buffy leaned forward and sniffed at the gauzy coils of smoke rising from the quenched candle. "I do love the way candles smell when they're just put out."

"Me too. Um. You do remember that the disinvite only keeps vamps out if you don't invite them back in." Willow grinned teasingly at her. "Maybe I'd better leave the book here just in case I need to do the spell again."

"Willow."

Willow laughed. "After all, you might have to invite Angel in. So that you won't hurt his feelings. I wasn't talking about the other one."

"Sure you weren't."

She went gloomily about her patrol, but saw no one, not even a regular vamp she could dust. Tried not to admit to herself that she wanted Spike to show, wanted to just look at him, talk to him.

Not Spike. Not Spike. The demon. Why couldn't she remember that?

She slept badly that night and was heavy-eyed when she got up the next morning. William was coming down the stairs as she let herself out of her apartment.

"On your way to work?" he asked and she nodded.

"You too?"

"Yes. Er, did you find some lecture notes after I left the other day?"

"No, I didn't. But I think I would have noticed a sheaf of paper lying around."

"It would have been just one page. I had it folded up in my pocket and I can't find it now. I must have dropped it somewhere."

Buffy paused in the middle of locking her door. "Let's take a look. It could have fallen on the floor and I didn't notice."

She led the way into her flat, then looked back in surprise when he hesitated at the door.

"William? Come on in. Is something wrong?"

He rubbed his forehead. "Felt a bit wobbly for a moment."

"Can I get you something? A drink? At least some ice water?"

"You're very kind. But no, thank you. I'm fine." He smiled at her ruefully. "I've just been very tired recently."

"Working too hard?"

"I suppose. The faculty keeps making jokes about my burning the candle at both ends. But I haven't been going out, just staying home correcting papers and researching my lectures. It's just that I keep falling asleep over my work for no reason at all."

"I've been having trouble with sleep recently too. Maybe it's the weather. Oh!" Buffy caught sight of a slip of white showing under the end table beside the couch. "I think this may be what you're looking for."

The folded sheet had been kicked almost under the couch with only the corner of it visible. She pulled it out and handed it to him.

"This is it," he said with relief after unfolding it and scanning it over. "Thank goodness. That's saved me several hours of work I can ill afford."

"I'm glad..." She stopped abruptly, seeing through the open front door Angel coming down the hallway. She moved swiftly to block the door before he could try to enter. She didn't want him finding out that he couldn't. "Angel? Why are you here? Has something happened?"

"I just thought you might like a ride to the College." He frowned at the sight of William behind her. "It's a bit early to be calling."

"Or a bit late," murmured William with malice aforethought.

"Say what?" snapped Angel, his frown deepening into a scowl.

William ignored him and smiled at Buffy as he stepped past her into the corridor, crowding Angel a little so that he was forced to step back.

"I have to be going. Thank you for everything."

"What everything?" growled Angel, watching William head down the hall to the stairs. "And what did he mean, a bit late?"

Buffy gave him an exasperated look as she locked her door. "He didn't spend the night, if that's what you're thinking, Angel. And it's none of your business if he had."

"I wasn't thinking that!"

"Sure you weren't." She swept towards the stairs. "You have no call to sound so disapproving. It's insulting to both him and me. But I suppose he's the one who put it into your head with that crack of his. And that does surprise me. It wasn't a very gentlemanly insinuation and that's not like William."

"You know him so well after only a few short days?" Angel was looking like a thundercloud again. Buffy wondered with amusement at what point brooding turned into sulks.

She shrugged lightly. "William's an open book."

The other one wasn't. The other one was one huge question mark.

And kept on being one. Research was coming up empty despite all Willow, Giles and Angel's efforts. Even Wes, back in L.A., had to confess that he couldn't find anything in Wolfram and Hart's books either.

She hadn't even seen him the last several days. She had thought that he would be constantly in her face every night and had in fact been looking forward to it though she knew she shouldn't. But he was nowhere around. At times she thought she felt his vibe while she was on patrol and would turn quickly to follow it up, but it was always gone before she was sure whether she wasn't just imagining it. The only vamps she saw were a couple of usual ones, easily dusted.

She felt just like a violin string being wound tighter and tighter to the breaking point. 'All these shoulds and shouldn'ts that we demons never have to worry about,' mocked Spike in her head. Yeah, they had it easy, didn't they? What would it be like to just do what she wanted?

She heard William going up and down the stairs a couple of times, but didn't go out to speak to him. William was not whom she wanted and it wasn't fair to encourage him.

The weekend came. Willow and Xander wanted to go clubbing and, since Buffy felt like some frenetic activity right at the moment, she went along. So did Angel, though she knew he hated the noise and the crush. It wasn't his scene, hadn't been even back in Sunnydale; he was making a special effort just for her. She thought ruefully of how much she had wanted that those first couple of years of their relationship, how she had constantly looked for him at the Bronze. Now she didn't really care.

He danced a few of the slow dances with her and she sat out the other slow ones at the table with him, sipping at a drink and making light conversation, trying to keep things easy between them. He knew something was going on and she didn't want him looking too deep.

The fast dances she threw herself into without him, needing the frantic action and the pulsations of the too-loud music with its bass turned up high and the vibration of the rhythm pounding through her like the beat of her heart, her hair whipping around her face. She lost Willow and Xander in the crush, but she didn't need them, didn't want a partner though the men jostled each other to dance close to her and try to get her to respond to them. But she didn't really see them, caught up in motion, whatever male body that happened to be in front of her becoming only an unneeded adjunct to her movement.

Fast dance turned to slow and she began to work her way back across the dance floor to the table, still moving languidly to the deep, sensuous beat. Some guy stepped towards her, wanting to ask her to dance this with him and she started to shake her head, explain that she was on her way to join her friends. But then he stepped back suddenly, his gaze going past her.

"This dance is mine," purred Spike's voice behind her.

Her heart leapt. She looked back over her shoulder and there he was, barely an inch from her, just the slightest hint of fang showing in his tight smile, lids down over smouldering, dangerous eyes. In full predator mode. The blue-eyed white leopard and just as deadly. No wonder the other man backed away.

"They'll see you," she muttered, casting a glance at the table on the far side of the dance floor, where Angel was sitting and Willow and Xander were joining him. But in the crush and the dark and the strobing lights, they might not be able to make out either her or who she was with.

"I should care?"

"I don't want them to see you."

"Who are you afraid of? Them or me?"

She started to move away and he drew her back with light fingers on her upper arms. Barely a touch, but she stopped. Couldn't help it.

"I...hoped you'd left Rome." She bit her lip, furious at her own reactions. "Where have you been for the last few days?"

"Around. Did you miss me?"

"No! Did you do it on purpose?"

"Maybe. Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder. Or at least turn up the heat."

His fingertips slid lightly and caressingly down her bare arms. She shivered involuntarily.

"Don't touch me."

"Why not? You like it."

"Angel's with us. He'll smell you on me."

"Let him." He pulled her back to lean against him.

She found herself relaxing against him, wanted to melt into him. They were both still moving to the music, bodies rubbing sensuously against each other. He bent that beautiful head, cheekbone cool against hers, parted lips brushing the corner of her jaw.

He felt so good, all that hard muscle against her back. Maybe if Angel smelled him on her, he would think it was William she had touched, she thought wildly, and that the vamp vibe was from someone she had dusted. He wouldn't be expecting Spike to be around, so surely he would think the scent was from two different things not one. She could explain it to him that way if he asked.

"Are you trying to protect me?" he asked, amused. "I like that. But I can take that wanker."

And then again, Angel might clue in. She turned to face him, holding him away from her by her fingertips against his stomach. He pressed forward against them, smiling.

"Maybe. But a crossbow can take you."

"Too chicken to fight me fair, is he?"

"No. But Giles and Xander will use crossbows."

"They're human. I'm a vamp. I move too fast."

"Not if you don't see it coming."

"Are you afraid of that or are you afraid of this?" His fingertips ran lightly down her spine.

"Spike. Stop."

He raised his hands, smiling, held them palm out at his shoulders. But his head bent and his open mouth was not even a fraction of an inch away from hers and his breath shook against her lips with his laughter. She was so aware of him that just that tiny stir of air was enough to make her feel as if he had actually kissed her, to vividly bring back the inner shape of his mouth and its taste. Her Slayer senses had gone on alert with his vamp signature and she was attuned to everything about him—the coolness and solidity of the ripped muscles under her fingertips, the familiar scent of leather and cigarettes and his own clean flesh beneath, that beautiful face filling her vision, the throb of the music stressing the rich sensuality that had suddenly sprung up between them.

"Heat," he said. "Don't you feel it?"

"No."

"Liar. Denying it doesn't make it go away."

"Spike, step back."

"Not touching you, Slayer."

And he wasn't. His open mouth was sliding down the side of her face, along her throat, across her collarbone, but moving always a fraction of an inch away so that only his breath feathered her skin. His hands slipped downwards over her breasts to her waist to her hips. Shaping the air. Not touching. But anticipation of his touch was almost more intense that the touch itself would have been.

"Dammit, Spike!"

"You want me to touch you."

His lips pressed for just a second on her bare shoulder, cool lips that burned. She shuddered violently, wanting it so badly.

"See? And I want you to touch me. Why is it wrong, Slayer?"

"You're not hi..."

"What?"

It took the last of her resolve to pull away. "They're looking for me."

She could see Willow and Xander craning their heads as they looked around for her among the crush of bodies.

"How long can you keep running?" he asked, amused.

Not that much longer, she thought bitterly. "Go away."

"I'll go. To your flat. You're not getting off that easy, pet. I'll be waiting for you."

"That won't do you any good," she snapped. "I had Willow do that disinvite spell. You won't be able to come in."

"So there," he mocked with that vivid, gorgeous smile. "I'll be waiting for you anyway, Slayer."

To tempt her to invite him in. And she would be tempted.

"It's just not fair," she muttered under her breath.

He heard that. She heard him laugh behind her as she wove her way through the crowd. Some man in front of her was holding a drink. She managed to bump against his elbow and felt liquid splash onto her thin top and down one leg of her leather leggings.

"_Scusi, signorina!_"

"_È colpa mia. Non importo._" She hoped she had said that right.

She went on, smiling, flicking at the spill lightly with her fingertips. The alcohol should mask any lingering scent of Spike on her. It seemed that it did because Angel looked up at her with no suspicion at all when she reached the table.

"Not dancing anymore, Buff?" Xander asked.

She smiled weakly. "Wore myself out."

"I'm not surprised." Xander grinned at her. "Must be a Slayer thing, having that much energy."

Not a Slayer thing. Just a female-in-heat thing, she thought bitterly. Her nerves were all on edge and her skin felt tight and hot and sensitive. If someone had laid a finger on her, she probably would sizzle.

She was on edge the rest of the evening, at once wanting it to end and wanting it to go on forever so that she wouldn't have to face him when she got back home.

They drove back to her apartment first because the rest of them were all going back to the College. When Xander stopped the car in front of it, she scrambled out as fast as she could to prevent anyone from joining her.

"I'm sorry not to ask all of you up for a nightcap," she said hurriedly as Angel began to climb out too, "but I'm kinda tired."

"I am too," said Willow, glancing at Angel. She probably thought Buffy just didn't want Angel to find out about the disinvite on the flat. "Let's just call it a night."

She waved them off and saw Angel frowning out of the back window. He knew something was off. Slayers didn't tire that easily. But what was she going to say? 'I don't want you all to come up because I've got a demon waiting for me on my balcony'?

Which was exactly where he was, sprawled in a chair at the balcony table, smoking a cigarette.

"Took you long enough," he said and grinned when she didn't step out of the door, but stayed inside the flat where he couldn't enter. "Trying to avoid temptation, Slayer?"

"Oh, shut up."

"Cute trick that, making that guy spill his drink on you. I take it that the alcohol fumes covered my scent."

"Yes." She was embarrassed that she had been forced to resort to a trick like that.

He gave her an up-from-under look. She hadn't turned on the living room lights and his face was in shadow, only the sharp curve of his cheekbone and the platinum of his hair etched out of the dark by the moonlight. He drew on his cigarette and the light from the coal glowed red on his face for a second, turning it predatory, and lit hot sparks in the blackness of his pupils. For a moment, he looked all demon.

"Ashamed of me, are you?"

"It isn't that!"

"Isn't it?"

She just didn't want to see him dusted. "Go away, Spike!"

"Can't. There's something tying us together, Slayer. Don't you know that? Some invisible cord. I can feel the pull."

"There's nothing connecting us. Leave Rome, Spike."

"Well, I did, y'know. Went to Venice last weekend. Pretty city, Venice. But here I am back again."

"Stalking me."

"Is that what you call wanting to be around you, Slayer? You underestimate your attraction. Moth to the flame, I am."

"Yeah, right."

He laughed. "'S true. Shoulda seen me rushing through things in Venice just to get back here fast. Went without sleep for forty-eight hours straight to get things done quick. Was I ever knackered! Funny, really. But I couldn't stay away."

She tried to ignore that. "Why were you in Venice anyway?"

"Little job for the Master. Oh, get that look off your face, Slayer. You'd have approved of this one."

"Somehow I doubt that," Buffy muttered.

"You have a suspicious nature." He grinned and flicked the stub of his cigarette over the railing in a shower of sparks. "Remember that Immortal git, the one that got so scared of you he cut and ran? Big mistake, that was. Seems that when he took off he forgot all about the couple of chores he'd been doing for the Master and they got messed up. The Master wasn't happy about that at all. And he took offense that the wanker was more scared of you than of him. _Lèse majesté. _So he slapped a bounty on the git's head."

"Which you collected."

"Yeah. Nice little nestegg I've got now. Money for old rope, it was. Immortal twit thought he'd gotten away clean, but it just happened I knew it was Venice he'd buggered off to. His own minions caved when I told them who wanted him. The Master's one sod you don't piss off. Older than Rome, he is, and meaner than a spitting cobra. Minions sold the Immortal down the river fast as they could. It was surprisingly satisfying taking him down," he said thoughtfully. "Don' know why."

"Well, I was going to dust him myself, so I don't mind that you did." She was relieved that the conversation had taken this turn. The neutral subject was a gift, hopefully distracting him from the other.

"Didn't actually. The Master wanted him alive. But the Immortal's probably wishing I had dusted him. The Master's not known for his kindly nature. Immortal might not be so pleased with his immortality now that it means having his guts pulled out inch by inch for a few centuries. Or even eternally."

"Uh..."

"You're not gonna shed tears over him, are you? Way I hear it, it's only what he deserves."

She thought that over. He was right. Vamp internal affairs were not her problem. The Master, however...

"Who's the Master, Spike?"

"Yeah, heard you were hunting him. Don' know his name, don' know his whereabouts and wouldn't tell you if I did." At her reproachful glare, he shrugged. "He's old, Slayer. He's seen history flow past him like a river. You're a mayfly to him. He might brush at you like he'd brush at a gnat pestering him, but he doesn't really care if his minions fail to wipe out your baby Slayers or your College. He can wait you out, you see, just like he's waited out any other calamity that's rocked the Eternal City these last two millennia. But kill him and you'll see blood running ankle-deep through the streets of Rome."

Buffy frowned. "Say what?"

"There's an equilibrium between life and death in Rome right now, Slayer. The Master's interest is not in killing Romans in their hundreds of thousands or in bringing hellgods across dimensions to turn this planet into a hellworld. Apocalypses don't interest him. All he cares about is his own comfort, to live in luxury forever and hold onto that power it's taken him centuries to accumulate. He's entirely self-absorbed. He doesn't want change and he doesn't want war. He wants a balance of power and he's the only thing holding his minions back. Kill him and the power struggle that will erupt after he's gone will be like nothing you've ever seen. Added to that, whichever vamp comes out on top will be younger, which means far less wise and far more bloodthirsty. Ask yourself if it's worth it."

"But the deaths..."

"Go ahead and prevent them. Save all the victims you can. Dust all the minions you like. He won't care." He looked at the dissatisfaction on her face and laughed a little. "Evil's always there, Slayer. You can never eradicate it. If you could, you'd get heaven on earth. But that's not gonna happen. You Slayers, you're like cops. And like cops anywhere in the world, all you can do is hold back the tide, not make it go away."

"That is the most depressing thing I've ever heard," she muttered.

"Or the most heroic." He let a beat go by for her to think about that, then shrugged. "Talk to your Watcher about it."

"Damn right I will."

There was a little silence. He was leaning back in his chair, watching her with lazy sensuality, his eyes heavy-lidded and dark. It had been foolish to hope that he would forget his real purpose. All throughout their conversation, there had been that undercurrent of heat and demand. Tomcat on the back fence calling. That insistent, primal pull of passion and desire.

Not love, just lust. But it was oh so compelling anyway.

"Who do you see when you look at me?" he asked suddenly.

"No one!"

He was leaning forward now upon his forearm on the balcony table. A cat about to spring.

"This doppelgänger? I looked for him, y'know. Couldn't find him."

But William was just one floor up. Buffy was relieved that Spike hadn't located him, because who knew what he might do if he did? But still it shouldn't have been that difficult.

"Who is he, Slayer? This good twin. I'm the evil twin, aren't I? Does he make you feel the way I make you feel?"

She shook her head involuntarily and he smiled.

"Didn't think so. Opposites attract. The darkness calls you. Just as the light calls me. Danger adds spice."

He was out of the chair in one fast rush, a predatory leap forward, that cat spring. His hands slammed against the doorposts. Even though she knew he couldn't pass the door, she jumped and caught her breath in a gasp.

"See?" he purred. "Your pulse is racing, Slayer. I can sense the blood beat. It's a thrill, isn't it? Walking that tightrope, aware of the abyss below, wanting to fall."

Outside that invisible barrier, he was only an inch away. She could feel his breath upon her lips, smell the scent of him, see the blaze in those blue eyes looking down at her.

"Fall, Slayer. I'll catch you."

That's what she was afraid of.

"You'll be safe. Not gonna rip your throat out. That's not what I want. Just want us to pleasure each other. Where's the harm in that?"

There was harm. He didn't love her and she couldn't allow herself to love him. He wasn't Spike, any more than William was, just the other side of the coin—human one way, demon the other.

"Buffy!" he said intensely. And that was Spike, the very sound of him.

Those eyes burning down at her—she had seen them before. That darkness and that vulnerability had been there whenever they had taken each other, from the first time in that abandoned house they had brought down around them and every time since.

It was Spike. It wasn't just the demon. Or if it was, the demon was what had made love to her. The soul had come later.

And the soul was here in this Spike, she remembered with a shock. She could see it. Behind the passion of those eyes, that softness.

"Oh, my God!" she whispered.

Not demon or human, but the combination that was Spike, who had been both, retaining so much of his humanity. Who had loved her even without the soul. Stripped of his memory now, not loving her or remembering anything about his history, but still Spike.

He wasn't just the demon. Somehow, impossibly, he was Spike. More than the demon and more than the human. That combination of the two that she had yearned for. Back here in front of her again. And once again, out of fear, she was throwing it away.

Not this time. Her hands reached out to him.

"Yes, give in to it," he said in a breathless rasp and kissed her, sweeping her up against him.

She kissed him back feverishly, desperately, realizing only dimly that he had pressed right through the barrier. Maybe her unvoiced consent had been enough or maybe Willow's spell had failed or never taken hold. She didn't care.

It was Spike in her arms again. Spike kissing her with raw urgency. Spike's body hard and demanding and intoxicating against hers. She held him fiercely, losing herself in the sense of him, in taste and feel and scent, in the rightness of it.

They kissed and kissed again, mouths twisting together devouringly, bodies locked together and rubbing against each other greedily. She had been celibate too long, wanting no one but him, even when she had not known she loved him. And here he was.

She wasn't even aware of shoving his duster off him, was aware only the feel of his body beneath the soft cotton of his tee under her hands as she rediscovered the familiar planes and angles of muscle and bone. Aware of him as she had never been aware of him before when he had been only an instrument to give her sensation, like some dildo or vibrator. Aware now not only of his body, but of the _person_ making love to her, that unique, particular being that was Spike whom she had never allowed to truly reach her before.

She saw him now, this gift that she had previously thrown away, was aware of nothing else, wanted nothing else.

He tore his mouth away and she felt his chest and stomach heave against her as he gasped for breath, caught up in the storm as much as she was. Cool lips burned down her throat.

"Which..?"

She knew what he meant; they were on the same page of need. "Second door..."

Her arms wrapped around his neck as he scooped her up, swept her through space. The next moment he was tipping her onto her bed.

The room was dark. He could see with his vamp sight; she couldn't. She reached out to snap on the bedside lamp.

He looked up, amused, from where he was pulling off her high, strappy sandals. "And here I thought you'd be the shy type and want the lights off."

"Want to see you," she said and he smiled.

"Like what you see?"

"So much."

She had never allowed herself to really see him before, see his beauty. Now she couldn't stop looking, her gaze lingering on him, moving over him like a caress.

"Like what I see too," he muttered. "Bloody hell, Slayer, just looking at you is driving me insane, never mind the rest."

He was peeling her leggings off her, leaving her only in her black thong. She caught at her top and yanked it over her head, flung it away together with her strapless bra and heard the harsh rasp of his breath in his throat as he looked down at her naked breasts.

"God!" he said and folded abruptly down on top of her.

His mouth sucked in most of one breast. She gasped involuntarily as his tongue rasped over her nipple. That tongue was different, sandpaper rough like a cat's. Her nipple went painfully hard in a second, her whole body arched, pushing her breast into his mouth, her hands clutching his head to hold it to her. The sensation was unbelievable, shockingly erotic.

His head lifted to move to her other breast and she caught a glimpse of his eyes. His irises had gone gold, his vamp nature coming to the fore. She had never allowed that before, had always hated that it was a vamp she was fucking. And he had repressed that side of himself, knowing that to remind her of it would be to break the spell of lust that had brought her to him and would repel her into a flight from which there would have been no returning.

She knew better this time, realized now that she had cheated herself by not letting him be what he was. Cheated him too. And this time it wasn't just fucking.

"God, Spike!" she gasped as that raspy tongue worked her and that demanding mouth drew on her in strong pulls that went straight down to her core so that she arched and writhed uncontrollably.

But it wasn't just the sensation she wanted, the way she had before, closing her mind to everything but the raw sexuality, shutting him out. This time _he_ was what she wanted, his person, his being.

Impossible to explain.

"Want your skin," she muttered, pulling at his tee. "Want your skin on mine."

She heard the thud of his boots hitting the floor as he kicked them off, but was too occupied with pulling his tee over his head to pay any attention. He twisted, his hands yanking at his belt. She felt him shoving his jeans off hurriedly, kicking them away, but was too busy caressing his face, his body, to think of anything else.

"Slayer," he whispered, an oddly strangled sound, as her open mouth ran down the cord of his neck, sucked along his collarbone, as her arms clenched about him and her hands slid cherishingly over his body. "Slayer. What aren't you telling me?"

"What do you mean?"

She felt him shiver against her, saw his eyes half-close as his forehead fell against hers, saw the helplessness and the vulnerability in them.

"This...It's something more. It's..."

"Yes," she whispered. "It's what it should have been."

"What are you doing to me, Slayer?"

"Loving you."

"Oh, God."

Something moved, intense and painful in his eyes, some deep-seated response. She didn't know whether it was memory or whether it was something fundamental ingrained bone deep in him. But she felt him surrender to her. The way he had always surrendered to her, even though she had always held herself apart, kept herself essentially untouched. He never had. He had always given himself totally, nothing held back, and even though she had tried to deny it, tried not to see, she had known it. And here he was doing it again without even knowing what he was doing, that reflex so basic to him, as much part of him as his vampiric nature.

"I've been such a fool," she muttered and wrapped him tightly in her arms, felt the shuddering fierceness of his response.

So much more than it had been before, now that it mattered so much to her. Every touch felt so intensely that it bordered on pain. A tidal wave of feeling. He was skilled, a hundred and twenty years of practice behind him, and knew exactly how to drive her mindless with passion. But she knew him intimately, knew just where and how to touch to give him pleasure too.

She saw his eyes glaze, heard the gasping pant of his breath, and her heart hurt her, seeing his pleasure and getting so much pleasure in return as his hands and his mouth and his body moved on her, the two of them twisting and coiling about each other, driving each other higher and higher.

Every touch so desperately wanted, every slide of skin against skin blazing like wildfire along their nerves, friction building an agonizing spiral of exigent desire. Her nails clawed his ass, her teeth sank into his shoulder, his fangs pricked constellations of tiny bite marks over her breasts and belly and thighs. But those slight stings were only an even more arousing stimulation, thrust them even deeper into that passionate frenzy.

"Oh, God!" she gasped. "Can't take it anymore! Spike...!"

Her thong snapped and was gone.

"Yes," she breathed as he moved over her with intent. "Oh, yes. Ohh!"

He was always a little too big; her Slayer muscles were a little too tight. That first thrust was always an excruciating rapture. She cried out in exultation, clenched hard upon his thickness within her and heard him groan in shock and delight. He didn't remember what it had been like before between them, but she did and to have him within her again, stretching her the way he always did, was ecstasy.

He was whispering things as he hammered into her, words of praise, of encouragement, telling her how she made him feel, how glorious it was. He always had—when did Spike ever stop talking?—but always before his words had been muffled against her skin because he had known she didn't want to hear them, and always before she had never wanted to say them back. But now she wanted to say them back, all those endearments, had to clench her teeth not to say the love words that would only startle and disturb him this time.

Driving each other up that agonizingly rapturous climb, moving faster and faster until they reached that bright, sizzling, accelerated rush. Beyond words now or gentleness, eyes blind, bodies racked with pleasure, lost in savage, exigent sensation that went on and on and on, the world and time lost in this eternity of delight. Until mind and body could bear no more.

She felt him jolt and pulse within her, felt her own brain fry right out in the waves of pleasure that battered into her, in that shattering climax that no one else had ever been able to give her.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

"That wanker," he said.

"Who?"

"Old Stone-face. The one who doesn't know how to smile."

"Angel." She grinned into his skin. "What about him?"

"I don't like him hanging around."

She kissed the side of his neck as he lay half over her, his thigh between hers and his face buried in her hair. "You're jealous."

"No. Yes! You're _mine_, Slayer."

"Yes, I am. So there's nothing for you to get jealous about."

"He's had you." A growl.

She hit his shoulder lightly. "Once. Years ago. And things immediately went south."

"He's still hoping. And he's got the advantage. Fights on the side of light." There was a sneer in his voice. "He can be with you. Out in the open, not hiding in the shadows like me. He shares your life. Your friends accept him."

"What matters is whether I accept him."

"He comes near you, I won't be able to able to control myself, Slayer."

"I'm not going to let him into my flat, let alone into my bed. That satisfy you?"

He raised his head to look down at her. His fangs were showing.

"Did he make you feel the way I make you feel?"

"No. Never." Her arms tightened about him, cherishing him. "No one's ever made me feel the way you make me feel."

His face softened. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He bent and his lips slid along her jawline, then down the cord of her neck. She felt the points of his fangs prick the skin.

"Could make you feel more."

She could hear the smile in his voice. He was half teasing, half serious. And he was Spike.

She had never allowed him to drink from her. For a Slayer to allow a vamp her blood was one of the great transgressions. Oh, she had heard of how humans could get obsessed with a vamp taking their blood and she had seen it when Riley had become addicted. It puzzled her a little, because when she had been bitten, by Angel, by the Master, it had hurt. They had also taken too much, Angel by accident, the Master on purpose, and she had almost died.

But Spike wouldn't take too much and she wouldn't mind the pain if it gave him pleasure. And the word 'transgressions' was meaningless between them now when they had already transgressed so majorly.

"Do it," she said.

She felt his little jolt of amazement. He hadn't expected her to consent. "Slayer..."

"The blood is the life, isn't it? Share my life, Spike." In the most intimate way possible—proof positive, since he needed it, of what he meant to her.

He lay unmoving upon her for a moment, his weight on his forearms on either side of her and his mouth against her neck. Then she heard the little, sharp, indrawn catch of his breath and his fangs slid into the vein.

It didn't hurt, just as the tiny stings during lovemaking had been no more than incitements. And then the draw started.

Pure euphoria. Pure fire blazing through her like a lightning strike. Unbearable ecstasy thrilling through every nerve in her body, singing through every vein. A glorious, indescribable rapture.

"Holy...!"

She felt him jolt into fierce urgency too. An aphrodisiac, he had said Slayer's blood was. But he hadn't mentioned that his taking it would be an aphrodisiac to her. Though she should have known that from the way Riley and the other humans had been obsessed with it.

She flamed up against him, dragging him down upon her, meeting his demand with her own. They just about devoured each other alive, feral and insatiable.

"I think I've died and gone to heaven," he said, lying weakly across her hours later, too exhausted to lever himself away. She couldn't even lift an arm to push him off, didn't want to because it felt so good to lie like this, the two of them limp in each other's arms and still shuddering exquisitely with aftershocks.

"Been there," she murmured. "This was better."

"God, I'm wiped. That last one was the topper to the night."

She couldn't help giggling. "Aphrodisiac wearing off?"

They must have broken every record they had set previously, unable to stop, taking each other again and again.

He grinned against her temple. "Body wearing out. God, that Slayer blood! Amazed I'm still in existence. Thought you'd burn me right up."

"Yeah, well, you melted my bones. I'm surprised I'm not just a puddle of goo on the floor. Oh, God, I need to sleep."

"Me too. I must be squashing you," he realized suddenly and heaved himself onto his back with an effort. His arm around her dragged her with him so that she was lying half over him.

"What time is it?" The clock that should have been on the night table had somehow got knocked clean over to the other side of the room, but there was a line of sunlight showing at a corner of the closely drawn drapes.

"Nine thirty," he mumbled with a vamp's infallible knowledge of exactly where the sun was.

"Thank God it's Sunday." She pushed away the hand that had slid down her spine to her ass. "Spike, if you start again right now, I'll stake you."

"Slayer, I'm incapable. I may stay incapable for a week."

"Somehow I don't think so." She ran her fingers up his inner thigh and laughed when his cock stirred.

"Have mercy."

"That's my line," she purred into the hollow of his shoulder.

His chest heaved under her on a breath that was half laughter and half a sigh of deep satisfaction.

"You scare me," he murmured. "You're a bleeding miracle."

"_I_ scare _you_? You terrify me."

His arm tightened around her. "Wouldn't ever hurt you."

"It isn't that. It's...I don't know what you are and I want this too much."

"Yeah, I want it too. Want it too much. Even though I know what you are. The Slayer. The Angel of Death for us vamps. Scares me how much I want it. Is it a death wish, d'you think?"

"No." She smiled crookedly. "I know what that's like. It's not a death wish. It's a life wish."

"Yeah. You're life, Slayer. You burn with it. So bright. A shining light."

There was a sudden sadness in his voice. She pushed herself up on one elbow and leaned over him, wanting to see his face.

"Golden rain," he murmured as her hair fell about him. "Like sunlight. Which is deadly to my kind. Matter and anti-matter. We're so wrong for each other."

"Don't care. Whatever you are, you're mine." She shook her head lightly so that her hair slid across his collarbone and chest, the fine strands clinging to his skin. "See how it clings. It wants to hold on to you."

He lifted a handful to his mouth. "Feels like silk. Silk and fire, you are. Nothing I could ever have expected."

"What did you expect?"

"Just sex. But this is so much more. You make me feel..."

"What?"

"Happy," he said under his breath. "So happy."

"Spike," she said helplessly and kissed him. His hand cupped the back of her head tenderly, sieving through her hair, holding her mouth to his.

"So beautiful," he sighed. "Too beautiful for the likes of me. We should never have started this."

"You're the one who insisted on it, demon."

"I know. And now I'm drowning."

"Do you want us to stop?"

"No! I'd bind you to me with fetters of steel if I could. But one can't bind light. You'll vanish in my hands."

"No."

"You will. Angel of death? No. Creature of light. And I'm a creature of darkness. You don't belong in the shadows with me."

She caught her breath sharply. "Do you remember?"

He frowned. "What should I remember?"

"Nothing." She bent and kissed the taut drum of his stomach and felt the deep muscles flex beneath her lips. "Not going to leave you, Spike. Not now."

"You will. You're _the _Slayer. They'll make you."

"No one can make me do anything. Not anymore." She had him back, even without his memory. However it had happened. She wasn't going to lose him now.

His fingertips drifted over the contours of her face, slid down to the hollow of her throat where the pulse beat with fierce life.

"You like me touching you. You like me making love to you. But what you are is life, Slayer. The strongest life on this planet. And I'm unlife." He flattened her hand on his chest so that the heel of her hand pressed against his breastbone and her fingertips lay against the hollow of his throat where no pulse beat. "See? A heart beat divides us."

"There might not be a beat, but there is a heart." She knew that now and maybe that heart wasn't hers right now the way it had been before, but she wouldn't let any chance of it being hers again slip away. "Just let it happen, whatever it is. Let's just find out where this might go. Or do you want to leave, Spike? I won't hold you against your will. Won't do anything to you against your will." Never again.

"God, no! Don't want to leave. I don't leave."

"No, you don't." She had to smile. He didn't even know why he said that, but that statement too was basic to him, ingrained in his nature.

She pushed his head back and kissed his throat, felt him arch it against her mouth. She smiled against his skin, ran her open mouth all over his throat and the underside of his jaw, felt him shiver with pleasure.

"The way you touch me," he breathed. "The way you hold me. It makes something inside me...hurt."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"It's a good hurt. Wish it could always be like this."

"We'll make it so," she said, her arms fierce around him, cherishing him.

* * *

><p>Footsteps woke her. She turned her head groggily. A bar of light was falling over the carpet from the crack in the curtains. From the angle, it was about two in the afternoon.<p>

"Buffy, where are you?" Xander's voice called.

"Oh, no!" she muttered and threw herself over Spike as he came snarling out of sleep, then dragged a sheet over herself just in time as Xander breezed into the bedroom.

"Whoa!" Xander jolted to a stop, his eyes saucer wide. Then he spun on his heel and fled back into the living room.

"Down, boy." She held Spike flat by main force as he struggled to get out of the bed. Luckily he hadn't gone into gameface. "You awake? It's only Xander. You don't need to rip his throat out."

"Any git comes walking into your bedroom without a 'by your leave' is asking to get his throat ripped out!"

"There will be no killing of my friends. Stay there. I'll deal with this." She got out of bed and reached for the robe she had left flung across a chair.

"Sod it, Slayer!"

"I want your word."

He sighed and subsided. "Yeah, okay."

Xander was pacing around the living room when she came out of the bedroom, closing the door carefully behind her.

"You left the front door unlocked!" he accused, apparently on the principle that the best defense is a good offense. "This is Rome, not Sunnydale! You could get into trouble that way."

"Slayer here. I don't think I have to worry about sneak thieves." Especially when she also had a vampire in the next room. Talk about guard dogs. "And, yes, this isn't Sunnydale, Xander. The next time try knocking and waiting for me to answer before walking in."

"Guess I'll do that from now on." He stared at her. "William? You're sleeping with William? I mean, really, Buffy!"

So he hadn't got a good look at Spike. And she supposed that, naked under the sheets and with bed hair, he could reasonably be mistaken for William at a quick glance.

"That's none of your business, Xand."

"He's not up to your weight, Buff. So he's a human, but he's not Angel and he sure isn't Sp..."

"Xander!"

"He's not even Riley, Buff! You've got nothing in common!"

"Xander."

The dangerous note in her voice finally reached him. His jaw clenched on the words sizzling on his tongue. Then he flung up his hands and flung away.

"All right, you won't talk to me about it. But at least talk to Willow or Giles."

"My love life is nobody's business but mine. I'm done with the bunch of you interfering with it. Why are you here anyway?"

"Giles and Angel found this prophecy. They want you to come take a look at it."

"Yeah, okay. But I want to take a shower first. Go back to the College, Xand, and I'll take a cab when I'm ready."

"The car's downstairs. I can give you a ride." Then he glanced at the closed bedroom door. "Uh, maybe I'd better wait downstairs, huh?"

For Xander, that was surprisingly tactful.

"That might be a good idea. I'll be about half an hour."

"Take your time. Good thing I came instead of Angel," he muttered under his breath as he opened the door.

"Pity you called him over to Rome in the first place," snapped Buffy.

"Hey, I just wanted to rub the Shanshu in," Xander said defensively. "I didn't think he'd make a beeline over here. Spike turning into a real boy instead of him was just too good to pass up."

Well, maybe he had a point. This time she was careful to lock the door. With Xander, one never knew whether he'd suddenly get a bright idea and come storming in again.

Spike was leaning back against the headboard of the bed when she came into the bedroom.

"Who's this William?"

"No one."

"Is he this doppelgänger you and Red were talking about?"

"Can we talk about it later? I don't have much time."

He considered her thoughtfully for a moment, his eyes narrowed, then shrugged.

"Okay. But we _will_ talk about it, Slayer."

She took a fast head to toe shower with scented soap, then hurriedly blow-dried her hair and pulled on jeans and a sleeveless turtleneck that would hide the fang marks in her neck, conscious all the while of him watching her with amused, sardonic eyes.

"Still hiding our relationship from the ponce?"

"There are reasons," she muttered.

"If you say so. And we'll talk about that too when you get back." He laughed when she sprayed herself with perfume. "Overkill, Slayer. The shower was enough to wash off my scent."

"Better safe than sorry." She shoved her feet into a pair of sneakers. "Stay here, okay?"

"No option. Trapped here until sundown." He slid down a little in the bed, stretching luxuriously. "Didn't really sleep before what with the interesting way we kept waking each other up, so grabbing some kip in a bed that smells of you and me and sex is no chore. I'm knackered."

She had to laugh. "Think we'll ever be able to get some proper sleep again?"

"Doubt it. Give us a kiss before you go then."

She bent to do so and caught herself back just in time, realizing how he had almost tricked her. "You want me scent marked again! Troublemaker."

He laughed. "It was worth a try. Want that poofter to know you're mine, Slayer."

"So not a good idea right now. Maybe later when I get a few things worked out."

"Promise?"

"Yes."

"I'll hold you to that, Slayer."

Xander wasn't able to tell her much more than that Wes had apparently found something in the Wolfram and Hart books and that Angel wanted her to hear it. The College was quiet, most of the SITs having gone out to have fun as usual on the weekend. Angel, Giles and Willow were in one of the smaller meeting rooms.

Buffy glanced at all of them quickly. Willow gave her a tiny shrug that said she didn't know what was going on and was puzzled as well. From the irritated look on Giles' face, he too had been left out of the loop and wasn't taking it well. But behind the carefully expressionless mask of his face, Angel was looking smug.

"Right. What's up?" she asked.

The room was one of the ones set up for videoconferencing. Angel hit a button on the console in front of him and one of the four screens mounted on the wall lit up.

"Wes found something."

Wes popped up on the three by two foot screen. He was sitting at a desk with a massive tome spread open in front of him.

"Buffy," he said and nodded to the others behind her.

"Wes. What have you got? Another prophecy?" said Buffy wearily.

"I wouldn't call it a prophecy precisely. I'm not sure what it is. More of a description of a possible sequence of events. But I think it refers to, er, William. In his present incarnation."

Trust Wesley to find the right word. The screen was now showing the page at which the book on his desk was opened. Buffy frowned. It was a cursive, strangely snakelike script that flowed and twisted in a disturbing manner.

"What on earth is that?"

"Not of earth," said Wes in voice-over. "It's a demon language. D'Orcrathimish, to be exact."

"And you can read this Dork-whatever?"

"No, no. But the good thing about the Wolfram and Hart books is that they provide a translation if you ask for one."

The view on the screen switched over to the facing page which was entirely filled with very, very small print. But at least it was in English.

"How convenient," said Giles in the driest of dry voices. "And the translation just appears the minute you ask for one?"

"Precisely!" said Wes with enthusiasm. "It saves so much time."

"Indeed it must. And how accurate is the translation?"

"Well..." Wes' voice suddenly became a little defensive. "No one actually speaks D'Orcrathimish, of course..."

"So it has to be taken on faith."

"I have tested the translations on languages I do understand," said Wes in a piqued voice, "and they have always been completely accurate."

"Of course," said Giles even more drily.

Buffy and Willow exchanged glances. Translations that couldn't be verified were a perfect boon to anyone who wanted to play games. Since both of them shared Giles' view of Wolfram and Hart as Evil Inc., they knew that anything coming from them should be taken with more than a grain of salt.

"What does it say, Wes?" Buffy asked. "It's hard to make out on the screen."

"I'll send you a copy. But I can give you the gist of it."

"Please."

The screen switched back to Wes' face. He looked animated and intrigued. Finding out new things always excited him, just as it did Giles. Wes might be much more the man of action now than he had used to be, but that scholarly reflex was ingrained in him.

"Basically, it's talking about someone who's shanshued and that has to be William..."

"Does it say 'shanshued', Wes?"

"No, no, that word comes from an entirely different language. No, the word used here translates as 'transmuted'. But the circumstances surrounding the event are too similar to be ignored. A demon changed to human as a reward for services done to the light, his past transgressions forgiven in the light of his present achievement."

"Sounds about right," muttered Xander.

"The trouble is that the pull of the dark side remains. William may be human now, but humans are not exempt from the temptations and curse of evil. As we all know, no one is completely innocent and he, having been a demon, would be more susceptible to the attractions of that state."

"Are you saying he's going to go all Darth Vader on us?" said Xander incredulously.

"Our fluffy William? No way!" exclaimed Willow.

"The possibility always exists. 'Consumed by the dark', it says here. And there's a lot about his heart being evil and about falling from grace and falling into the pit and surrendering to the evil within. It goes on and on about it."

"Spike's heart wasn't evil," Buffy protested.

"How can you say that after all the killing he's done?"

"He's been forgiven that!"

"And honestly!" said Willow. "Look at William. He doesn't seem capable of doing anything worse that giving somebody a bad mark on a term paper."

"The guy's a wuss," Xander nodded. "Now if it was Angel, I can see it happening."

Angel looked offended. "Why should that be easier to believe?"

"Well, Liam wasn't exactly a nice guy, with all that boozing and whoring and stuff." He shrugged when Angel glared at him. "Way I hear it, anyway. And maybe Angelus would still be in there and might take over. But Spikelus? C'mon."

"Any human being is capable of evil," said Wes earnestly. "One can't ignore what's here or take it any other way."

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?" asked Buffy with exasperation. "Kill William because some demon book says he might go bad?"

"Oh, good heavens, that's not what I meant at all!" exclaimed Wes. "We just thought you should know. For your own safety and that of others."

"I have to agree," said Giles. "The point of this research is to find out the implications of the change and the things you should be guarding against. The circumstances are so unusual and perhaps there's something we can do to prevent..."

"You just have to be wary of him, Buffy," said Angel. "Don't take everything at face value. He's not what he seems."

"Right," said Buffy, looking Angel over thoughtfully. "I think I see where _you're_ coming from."

"I'll fax you a copy of the translation with my annotations and you can look it over at your leisure," said Wes. "I truly do think it refers to William and that there is grave danger, certainly to him and possibly to others. All you'd have to do is keep an eye on him from a distance. Since you're both living in Rome, that shouldn't be difficult."

"From a distance sounds good," muttered Xander. "Who knows, maybe it's the sex that tips him over. You should stop sleeping with him, Buff."

Then, from the poleaxed expressions on everyone's faces, he realized what he had said.

"Uh..."

"Way to go, Xand." Buffy sighed deeply. "Everybody shut up. I don't want one word out of any of you."

"Buffy..."

"No, Giles. William's not a demon, so you don't have any excuse to hassle me about him. But if he was, I wouldn't care."

Willow made a little gulping sound and Buffy saw that she had guessed it was not William that Buffy was sleeping with. But Willow had a hand firmly placed over her mouth and it was clear that she wasn't going to say anything.

"My love life is my own affair. That's something I should have realized years ago. I'd have been a lot happier if I'd told you all to bug out right from the start. Well, I've learned my lesson. No more lectures or pressure or emotional blackmail. This time I do what I want."

She jumped off the table she had been perched on. On the other side of the room, Angel was gripping the back of a chair. His fingers had dug right through the leather. Even previously, he had resented both William and the fact that Spike had been the one to shanshu. Now with this revelation, he was furious.

"Deal," she said simply, then turned on her heel and walked out.

So William was going to go bad. In the cab taking her back home, Buffy thought about that, frowning. William was sweet and she didn't want anything nasty happening to him. There would never be a romantic relationship between them, but she didn't want to see a good man corrupted. She would keep an eye on him as Wes had suggested. There should be some way to prevent that. The Dork-whatever pronouncement didn't have to be a prophecy; it could just be a warning.

But she'd worry about all of that later. All she wanted to do right now was crawl back into that bed beside Spike. Neither of them had gotten any real sleep last night. They would both barely fall into a light doze before one or the other of them would start playing games again. She grinned, thinking about it. But now she could use some real shuteye.

She was yawning by the time she let herself into her apartment. The door was unlocked, though she had thought she had locked it behind her when she left. Xander was right. She was getting far too careless, what with first Willow and now Xander just walking in like that. Break-ins were the last thing she had to worry about, especially with a vampire upon the premises, but even burglars didn't really deserve to be eaten.

The bed was empty, its sheets flung to one side, and Spike was nowhere in sight. Buffy stopped short. The bathroom door stood wide open and even from here she could see that there was no one in it.

"Spike?" she called, turning to go back down the hall.

There was no answer. Living room, kitchen, Dawn's room, all were deserted. She even checked the balcony, though it was sunlit from end to end and he would never have stepped out onto it.

Where could he have gone and why? It was full day outside. He had said himself that he was trapped here until nightfall.

But trapped not in the apartment, just the building. He could go anywhere in the building that he wanted. As for why...

'Who's this William?' he had asked when Xander had mistaken him for William and then he had immediately made the doppelgänger connection. Had he possibly scented William going up the stairs sometime during her absence? Vampires with their heightened sense of smell would immediately catch the scent and he would have recognized that it was the same as his own. Just plain curiosity would make him go after it.

But how would he react when faced with a double? Spike with his direct ways of dealing with problems might just think that the simplest way was to eliminate it.

Buffy spun and ran out of the apartment.

'Consumed by the dark.' The word 'consumed' had another meaning, didn't it? _Eaten._ That was the other meaning!

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

She raced up to the fourth floor. William was in 4A, just to the right of the stairs. She banged on the door. There was no answer and she was almost about to kick it in when she heard movement inside.

A moment later, it opened and William stared at her. He was wearing a white terry bathrobe and his hair was tumbling in damp strands over his forehead as if he had just come out of the shower.

"Buffy? Is something wrong?"

"You're all right!"

"Why, yes. Why shouldn't I be?"

"Oh, wow!" She sagged weakly against the doorjamb with relief.

"Are _you_ all right?" he asked, concerned. "You look quite pale. Come in and sit down."

"I thought..." She let him lead her over to an armchair. "You wouldn't believe what I thought!"

"You look as if you've had a fright." He sat down on the coffee table in front of her and took her hands in his.

"You have no idea. Have you, um, had any visitors?"

"No. Actually I just got up." He colored a little. "I know it must seem strange to still be sleeping at this time of the day, but you know how tired I've been recently. The last thing I remember is grading some papers around eight last night. The next thing I know, I'm taking a shower at, what, four in the afternoon? It's rather embarrassing. And the worst thing is, even after all that sleep, I'm still tired."

"Didn't you say you'd been working hard? It's probably catching up to you," she said distractedly. "So you haven't seen anyone?"

He shook his head and gave her a puzzled look. "Whom should I have seen?"

Buffy flushed. "Um, it's just...I'm looking for a friend of mine and I thought you might have seen him."

"Is it that Angel person? Are you in some kind of trouble, Buffy? Because if you are..."

"Oh, no, no. It's nothing like that." She jerked hurriedly to her feet. "I-I have to go. You must probably think I'm crazy. I know I should explain, but things are really weird right now and it's complicated and I don't know how to..."

He rose too, his grip tightening on her hands. "You don't have to explain anything that you don't want to. Not to me. But if there's any way I could help, you know that you only have to ask..."

Footsteps thudded up the stairs and they both turned, startled. A moment later, Angel loomed in the doorway.

"So Xander was telling the truth," he said, staring at them. "You _are_ involved with him!"

"I don't believe this!" Buffy exclaimed. "You dare! I told you! I choose who I'm involved with and no one has the right to interfere!"

"Just because he's the one who shanshued..."

"The shanshu has nothing to do with it!"

"If it had been me who..."

"If you had shanshued, I still wouldn't be with you, Angel. I've learned that now. This has nothing to do with the shanshu and everything to do with the man I love."

"Are you trying to tell me that you have feelings for _him_?" Angel stamped in and waved a contemptuous hand in William's direction. "I can't believe that. It's hard enough to believe that you could have feelings for Spike, but this...this nerd? And after everything Wes told you was going to happen!"

"Yeah, well, I don't care about that!"

"For God's sake, Buffy!"

"I want you to leave, Angel. You're not welcome here. How dare you come in here and insult someone under his own roof!"

They were standing toe to toe now, glaring at each other.

"I'm trying to stop you from making a big mistake!"

"For my own good," mocked Buffy. "Where have I heard that before? Every time I get kicked in the teeth, that's when!"

"Listen to me!"

"No! You listen! I'm sick and tired of people shoving me around and telling me what to do with _my_ life!" She looked around as Willow, Giles and Xander showed up in the doorway, panting in their haste. "You all do what you want. But I have to do what you say. Live by your rules. Those rules have cost me too much!"

"Not arguing," said Willow softly.

"Yeah," muttered Xander. "Leave us out of it. We're only here because Willow got worried when Angel ran out like that."

"It all comes back to you, doesn't it?" she said angrily to Angel, then stopped short suddenly as her own words finally hit her. "Under his own roof!"

"What?" said Angel blankly.

"You're a vampire. You're standing in the middle of a human's living room. And you haven't been invited!"

Angel looked around at the front door, which was several feet behind him. His eyes widened with surprise and triumph.

"I told you there was something wrong with him!"

A vibrating snarl that had been reverberating just under the edge of her hearing for the last few minutes suddenly became clearly audible.

Buffy spun to stare at William. He was snarling as he glared at Angel. Except there were fangs in that snarl. And his eyes had gone yellow. And there was a scar across his left eyebrow.

* * *

><p>It had been right under her nose all the time and she hadn't seen it.<p>

She had been all hung up with 'normal', with all the shoulds and shouldn'ts, so tied up in knots about the choice between human and demon that she hadn't even considered what was right in front of her, that there was another alternative, obvious if she had only thought.

All the pieces suddenly fell together. There weren't two of them. There never had been. The PTB had done a Jekyll and Hyde.

No wonder his body had felt the same in both guises. It _was_ the same. She had never thought to question why William, a scholar, should have the ripped body of the fighter Spike was. The vamp vibe had thrown her off track. She had been concentrating on that, seeing only that one was a human and the other a demon, seeing only the dissimilarities and not seeing that the similarities extended further than just the way they looked.

Even the hair. The first time she had seen Spike, his hair had been honey-brown. The second time, it had been white and the very next day William had turned up with white hair and said that he had gotten drunk and couldn't remember bleaching it. But it must have been Spike who bleached it.

And the way both William and Spike had complained about being tired. Of course they had been. They really had been burning the candle at both ends— William during the day, Spike at night. Between the changes, they couldn't have gotten more than a couple of hours sleep. No wonder Spike hadn't been able to find his doppelgänger. When William existed, Spike didn't and vice versa.

She was seeing the pattern now. William constantly falling asleep over the papers he was grading. It hadn't been sleep; it had been the rise of the demon side, which was stronger than the human and could take over whenever it wanted to. The human side had had to wait until the demon was submerged in a deep sleep. She hadn't woken up to William in her bed last night because the light dozes that Spike had fallen into between their bouts hadn't been deep enough to allow William to come out. He had had to wait until Spike fell completely asleep after she left.

"It's Spike!" Xander was gasping. "He's not William! He's Spike! Buffy, did you know?"

"I knew about the demon," Buffy admitted. "I just didn't know that they were one and the same."

"Shifting between vamp and human." Willow was following the same track that Buffy had. "Spike kept coming into your apartment even though you never invited him. But you invited William and William was really Spike, so..."

"So of course Spike could come in," Buffy nodded. "That explains why Angel can enter what's supposed to be a human's home. William being Spike and Spike being a demon, there's nothing to keep Angel out."

"Buffy, don't!" Willow called as Buffy moved towards Spike. "He's in fugue state and he's dangerous!"

Spike was in full gameface, snarling as he glared at Angel. The yellow eyes were completely feral and mindless, their pupils turned to pinpoints. His focus had narrowed to a predator's tunnel vision and he was nothing but a killing machine. 'He comes near you, I won't be able to control myself, Slayer,' Spike had said. He had become entirely demon and there was no recognition of any of them in those burning eyes. He didn't know who he was or who they were.

"Disassociative fugue," Giles was murmuring. "No memory of the other personality. There have been cases. But for the form to also shift so radically from human to vampire, that's unique."

"Spike," said Buffy gently, trying to get through to him before he attacked Angel. She could see he was on the point of it, the demon responding to territorial imperatives.

Angel grabbed her arm to hold her back. "Stay away from him! He's pure vamp and he'll take your throat out!"

She struck his hand away angrily. "Spike would never hurt me!"

Angel grabbing her like that however was the final straw for the demon. With a ferocious snarl, Spike leaped forward. Buffy intercepted him barely in time.

"Spike, no!" She grabbed him around his waist, leaning into him and pushing him back.

"Buffy, get away from him!" Angel was shouting. "He'll kill you!"

"Angel, stay back! That's an order! Get out of his flat! That's what's setting him off! Spike, it's me," she said intensely. "Spike, come out of it. Come back."

He looked down at her blankly, still not himself and not seeing her. Fugue state, Willow had called it. On his feet but asleep, caught somewhere between sleep and waking. Jarred out of William and into the demon, but not yet fully conscious.

It must always have been like that. William hadn't remembered leaving her apartment and going to his own; he had only remembered waking up in the shower. There must always have been those unnoticed blank spots when the two of them transitioned back and forth between their two different identities.

"Spike," she said softly, calling to him. Because that was what he was, who he was. She only had to remind him of it. "Wake up, Spike."

His body shuddered suddenly against her.

"It's me," she said. "It's Buffy."

The gold of his eyes suddenly snapped back to blue. "Buffy..."

"Yes."

There was a hesitation. His eyes went from blue to gold, from gold to blue. She could feel him wavering between human and demon, like a compass needle swinging wildly back and forth from one extreme to the other, trying to find true north.

His hand rose. She caught it in hers. Their hands folded tightly together just as they had in the Hellmouth.

"Here, Spike, here. Your place is with me."

No sunfire flames this time. But still that seismic-deep throb of connection, that merging and complete awareness of each other that had come when they had clasped hands then.

"I love you," she said, just as she had said before. But this time it was no lie. This time it was the utter truth.

She could almost feel the click as something fell into place inside him, the decision made.

The gameface vanished and there was Spike looking back at her, his eyes widening. Really Spike. _Her_ Spike with nothing missing, not only his consciousness back, but also full knowledge of who she and he were.

"Buffy!" he whispered. "Buffy! This time...you mean it!"

"Oh, God, yes, Spike! I do!"

His arms closed about her; hers clenched fiercely about him. They held each other convulsively tight.

"But how?" he muttered against her cheek, their faces pressed hard together. "You didn't...you never...What happened?"

"You died." She kissed him lovingly. "Oh, God, Spike, you died."

"I died?" His breath hissed against her skin as he sorted through memories. "Oh, that's right. The amulet. It burned me up, dinnit?"

"Yes. You burned. To ash. I knew then how much you meant to me, how stupid I've been. I've learned now. I've learned. And then you came back. The PTB sent you back to me."

"'Course I came back. If I exist, I'd find my way back to you. Somehow."

And to save him from that search, the PTB had brought him back into existence in Rome where she was. Made him want to stay in the city enough to bargain with the Master for the privilege, even when he didn't know why he wanted to stay.

"Wherever you are, that's where I have to be. Wouldn't want to exist anywhere but with you. Don't you know that?" He laughed breathlessly against her hair. "I just didn't expect to exist."

She understood now what the PTB had been about. They hadn't been playing games as she had thought. They had had a serious purpose in mind.

In reward for what he had done in the Hellmouth, they had given him a choice, even let him try the choices out to learn the benefits and drawbacks of each condition. The final decision was to be his. He could be human or demon. Or he could be that combination of the two: that unique individual that was Spike, with all the benefits and drawbacks that came with that too.

Somewhere deep within himself in these last few minutes, he had made that choice, chosen not one or the other, but that persona that he had shaped and created for himself over the last hundred and twenty years: Spike.

They had given her the same choice too. They had known what she hadn't. Look, they had said. See. What do you really want? The human? The demon? Or the strange, wonderful, singular entity that was Spike? Spike might not have noticed how his human and demon sides had begun to merge together, but she had been shown all three, even if she hadn't been able to understand what was happening.

"I love you," she said again, accepting him now as she never had before, glorying in him.

He caught her to him, kissed her over and over.

"Uh, guys," said Willow behind them. "You are not alone."

Buffy and Spike leaned their foreheads together and laughed helplessly.

"Sodding hell, Red," said Spike. "Did you have to remind us of that? Why couldn't you all just have quietly folded your tents and snuck off into the night?"

"That would not be polite," said Willow in a severe, schoolmarmish voice, then giggled uncontrollably.

He grinned at her. "Hey, Red."

"You remember us now," said Buffy with relief and he smiled.

"I'm me again, so, yeah, I do."

Willow came and hugged him. "I'm so glad you're alive, Spike."

"Well, technically undead," said Xander. "Good to see you, evil...uh. What do I call you now that evil dead no longer applies?"

"Morally challenged dead?" suggested Spike, scarred eyebrow flying.

"Doesn't have the same zing somehow."

They shook hands with warmth.

"But does he have his soul?" Giles asked, hovering nervously.

"Oh, ye of little faith." remarked Spike. "You still got that coin, Red?"

"Yes." Willow pulled it out of her pocket and tossed it to him. "_Te patefac_."

Everybody smugly watched Giles' face as the coin flared green.

Giles looked embarrassed. "Well, I had to be certain."

"That's Ripper. Doesn't even trust the PTB," sighed Spike.

"One should never take anything on faith," said Giles sententiously, but he was smiling. Then he went abruptly serious. "I have to apologize for conspiring with Robin Wood to..."

Spike held up a hand. "Doesn't matter anymore, Watcher. That's another life, innit?"

"So it is." Giles shifted uncomfortably. "You're very gracious. William's still there, isn't he?"

"Oh, yeah. William's still here. And so is the demon. It will always be like that. Can you live with that, Watcher?"

"William," said Giles thoughtfully, "could be very useful for research."

"And the demon for combat," murmured Buffy. "Definite advantages that we should have made use of before."

"Yes, I'm beginning to see that."

"Get used to it, Giles. Because no one's splitting us up now. I've got him back now and I'm not letting him go. Spike and I, we're a team."

"Fighting on the side of light. But then you have for quite a while, haven't you, Spike? I just wouldn't admit it."

"As long as you know it now, Giles," said Buffy. "Because we're going to be getting a lot closer. Inseparable, in fact."

Giles looked at her. "You're talking about a claim."

"Buffy!" exclaimed Spike. His eyes flared.

She smiled at him. "Do you have any objections?"

"D'you think I'm out of my mind? But Watcher might."

"I don't waste my time on lost causes," said Giles. "Especially when the PTB seem to be in favor of it. Otherwise they would not have sent him to where you would find him."

"No!" exclaimed Angel violently.

Everyone looked around. They had forgotten that he was there. He had backed to the front door as ordered, but was still standing in the open doorway, leaning on his hands on the doorposts, glowering at them. His knuckles showed white where he gripped the jambs.

"My cookies have finished baking, Angel," said Buffy softly.

Spike didn't say a word. But he smiled. One huge, triumphant, shit-eating grin.

Angel turned on his heel and walked away.

"That is not one happy camper," remarked Xander.

"It's gonna burn him forever," purred Spike with profound satisfaction. "He's never gonna forget she picked me."

Xander was smirking himself. "You've whupped his ass, Spike."

"Have, haven't I? Sweet!"

"The demon is definitely still there," sighed Buffy.

Spike tilted a teasing brow at her. "You'd miss it if it wasn't."

"Yeah, I would." She leaned against him, smiling. "I do need some monster in my man."

"Let's go back to your place."

She looked up, puzzled. "Why?"

"Bed's just a twin here. Not enough space to get really creative."

"I think we'd better be going," said Willow hurriedly and he grinned at her.

"You always catch the subtleties, don't you, Red."

Xander groaned. "A two by four would be more subtle than you."

"Nothing else would get through to you, wanker."

They were all smiling as they went down to the third floor together.

"Weren't you even tempted to become human?" Giles asked wistfully.

Spike gave him a mocking glance. "The honest truth, Watcher? Not an iota. You humans are such wimps. I like being a vamp."

"Despite the disadvantages?"

"There's only two. But I've got my soul now and Buffy's got the other covered."

"He'll be drinking from me."

Giles sighed. Buffy patted his arm.

"It's not like he'll be taking very much, Giles. Slayer blood's powerful."

"I suppose I'll get used to it."

"You're just sorry it wasn't William he chose. But you know that wouldn't have happened. Don't you remember Wesley's prophecy?"

"What prophecy?" asked Spike.

"The one that said William would be consumed by the dark side."

Spike started to laugh. "Well, he was, wasn't he?"

"Why can't they ever just say things straight out in prophecies?" muttered Xander.

"That would make things too easy, Xand," sighed Willow.

The group split up, Buffy and Spike heading along the hall to her apartment and the other three continuing down the stairs.

"Be at the College tomorrow, Spike," Giles called back over his shoulder.

"What for?"

"A certain amount of paperwork has to be filled out if you're going to help Buffy train the SITs."

"I'm what?"

"We're a team, so you will," said Buffy.

"Looks like I will," Spike sighed. "Wonder if I should find some excuse for William to suddenly disappear from St. Mark's or whether I should keep on lecturing there. Figure that out later, I guess."

"And I want a complete account of your experiences for my Watcher's Diary," Giles finished. A fanatical gleam had entered his eye.

"Thought you lot frowned on torture," muttered Spike and Buffy laughed at him.

"It's only for a couple of hours."

"That's what you think. You should know the Watcher better than that after all these years. It'll be days. He's gonna be disappointed though. Don' remember much. Lock it," he said as she closed the front door. "Don' want Harris barging in again at some critical moment."

"He said he'd knock and wait from now on." But she locked the door anyway. "What do you remember?"

"Pretty much what I told you. Fire. An empty green place, which was probably the amulet. Then waking up outside the Colosseum."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing that matters. But you know the Watcher. He'll want a blow by blow description of my being William and the demon. Well, William was sodding dull. Nothing but lectures. The demon part was a lot more fun. Trouble is, the really interesting bits are X-rated." He grinned at her. "Don't think you'd want me to tell him the details."

Buffy laughed involuntarily. "Definitely not."

"Can't tell him anything about the switching back and forth either. Seem to have blacked out then. So what's left? Zilch. And anything from before I burned up he already knows."

"So you do remember everything now."

"Oh, yeah. Once I twigged to who I really was, it all came back."

"I almost wish it hadn't," she murmured. "So many bad memories."

"No sting to them now. Yeah, I can remember everything that happened, what I've done during all those years of my unlife. But there's no real pain to any of those memories anymore. Neither pain nor guilt. It's liberating."

"But if you remember..."

"I'd already learned to live with those memories, luv. When I first got the soul, it drove me out of my mind, what I'd done. But now it's like there's a distance between me and the memories. The PTB seem to have done something. The memories exist. I remember the deaths. I'm sorry I did them and I won't be doing anything like that again, now that the soul's telling me that it's wrong. But I'm not gonna be like Angel, beating myself up about it and jonesing for redemption. Can just get on with my life. Think that's what the PTB intended by leaving the memories but taking away the guilt. So I'd know what not to do without what I did do tearing me apart."

"I guess you don't need redemption. You've already been redeemed."

"Don' know about that. Don't think that's what it's about. More a fresh start, I think."

"There's things I wish you didn't remember," she muttered. "What I did to you. How much I hurt you."

He took her face in his hands. "And what about what I did to you?"

"It's not the same. You didn't mean to. I did."

"I still hurt you. Can't really forgive myself for that. But you've forgiven me, haven't you? I didn't think you ever would."

"I forgave you a long time back."

"Well then." He kissed her sweetly. "I'll forgive you your sins if you'll forgive me mine."

"Spike," she said helplessly. "I shouldn't get off that easily."

"But it doesn't matter, pet. None of it matters. It's done. It's in the past and all that's important is that it's led us here to this present. Do you love me?"

"I love you so much," she said. "More than I can say."

"You don't know how much I've wanted to hear you say that. That makes it all worthwhile, you saying that and meaning it." He leaned his forehead against hers. His eyes were all blue light, shining with love and that silken look of softness and tenderness. "Will you believe me now when I say I love you? Or will you still think it's obsession?"

She leaned against him, her arms tight about his neck. "How can I not believe you? You've proved it in the most terrible way. Spike, you died."

"Hey," he said gently, feeling the way she shivered. "It didn't take."

"It could have. If the PTB hadn't...I've learned my lesson now. Know how wrong it was, the way I used to think."

"It's called indoctrination, pet. Not your fault."

"Oh, it was my fault. I should have thought for myself. Taken the blinders off and looked. But I was all hung up on the normal. On all those shoulds and shouldn'ts. Took me a long while to realize that none of that mattered. That all that mattered was you."

"Buffy!" he whispered.

She had been seeking him all her life, seeking that lover and friend and partner. And she had searched all the wrong places, made all the wrong choices. 'You do have bleeding tragic taste in men,' Spike had said once and as usual he had been right. Pike, Angel, Parker, Riley, had all in their different ways failed her. Spike had not. There he had been, always. In plain sight. But she had never really seen him. She had let her own fears hide him from her.

He was the other side of herself, shadow to her light, just as, light to his shadow, she was the other side of him. They were like that yin-yang symbol, light with a spot of darkness, darkness with a spot of light, each at once mirroring and containing the essence of the other. Opposites, night and day and as inexorably interdependent. Light cannot exist without darkness, darkness without light. One could not exist without the other. It was the balance.

"We belong together," she said. "I know that now."

"Told you, din' I, and I'm always right." Then he laughed when she hit his shoulder with her clenched fist.

"Smugness is not appealing."

"I," he mocked, "am always appealing."

She had to laugh. It was lovely to see him like this—the desperation and the anguish and the guilt gone, the events of Sunnydale that had hurt and scarred him all thrust aside and the scars themselves shrugged away. Able to laugh again, strong and confident and sure of himself, that cocky demon side happily coexisting once again with the loving human side. He had recovered his balance.

"I can't believe you're here," she said, holding him fiercely tight, unable to completely take in the solid reality of him here in her arms again, the feel and scent and touch of him. He was stroking her face, her hair, those sensitive hands moving tenderly, delicately, over her.

"I can't believe you love me." His eyes were full of wonder and helpless joy.

"Where are we going?" she asked as he scooped her up suddenly, holding her high against his heart.

"Where do you think?"

"I thought you were incapable," she teased.

He grinned. "I was the demon. Of course I lied."

"Of course." She toed off her sneakers and let them fall.

It was easy to strip him of his clothes; he was only wearing William's bathrobe. She was fully dressed. But getting her out of her clothes turned into a delicious game of gliding hands and lips and laughter. Naked at last, they folded together onto the bed, locked in each others' arms.

"Do you mind that I didn't get involved with William?" she asked curiously. "After all, he was the human side of you."

"Didn't think much of him when I was him, Slayer. Wouldn't have thought to do something like this." He lifted her arm and trailed his lips along it from her wrist to her shoulder, then slid abruptly down to her breast which he sucked into his mouth.

"Spike!"

His tongue had turned raspy. He laughed against her breast as she arced it into his mouth.

"Put women on a pedestal, William did. Uptight as all hell. Unlike Angel, he was a gentleman. Didn't do the maids or the whores. Got rid of him as fast as I could, once I was turned. 'Course you didn't fall for that git."

"He was really sweet. And he's still in you, Spike. He's where the light in you comes from."

"Maybe. But it's sodding embarrassing remembering what a bloody innocent I was. Dru was a total revelation to William. And sweet doesn't turn you on, pet." He moved to the other breast and laughed when she shivered. "The demon turns you on. You always need some..."

"Monster in my man," she sighed. "Yeah, yeah. But it doesn't really apply, Spike. Angel's a vamp. He's got that monster in him. But I didn't want him."

He slid up her body until he was looking down at her face. His eyes were shining. "Yeah?"

"Those months you were gone, I could have settled for him any time..."

"Settled. I like that word," he purred and she thumped his shoulder.

"I didn't go to him. I didn't want him. I didn't want anybody. Just you, Spike. You're who I need. This unique ... particular ... beautiful..." she kissed him on each word, "individual that's you."

His head dropped against hers. "Did I mention that I love you?"

"Once or twice." She wrapped her arms around his neck, nuzzling her face against his. "Don't want to be without you ever again. It hurt so much when I thought you were dead. I don't want to go through that again. That's why I want the claim. So if you die, I'll die too."

"There are drawbacks to the claim. I want you to be aware of them."

"What drawbacks?"

"You'll live as long as I do."

"Well, that's the point, isn't it?"

"No, the point is that we're talking immortality here."

"What?" She pushed him back until she could see his face.

"Vamps don't die, pet, remember? They can be killed, but otherwise they go on forever. Think of Rome's Master, who was a vamp before Rome was even built."

"Oh, wow."

"Can you stand watching everyone you know pass away? Everything you know change and keep changing. Immortality has a price."

"You'll be with me. Lover and partner and mate." She felt him quiver on that last word, watched his eyes flare. "You'll never leave me."

"Never."

"Dawn being the Key, she might..."

"She will," he nodded. "Energy balls don't die."

"I think this might be what the PTB were after. An immortal Slayer. But what do you get out of it?"

"Do you have to ask?" He stroked her slowly and luxuriously. "You. Forever."

She reached up to kiss him. "No, seriously."

"I am serious. There's nothing more that I could ever ask for. You're everything I want." He thought about it for a moment. "Claim links us completely, so I might be able to walk in the sunlight."

"Like with the Gem of Amara?"

"Yeah."

"We'll be an unbeatable team."

They laughed softly against each others' faces.

"Make it happen, Spike."

He leaned his forehead against hers, looked deeply into her eyes. "You're sure?"

"Never more so."

He tipped her head back, stroked the line of her neck with tender, loving fingers.

"Gotta make it look pretty," he murmured. "You're gonna wear the mark forever. Here, I think."

He kissed the point he'd chosen, down low, close to the base of her neck. Then his fangs slid delicately, painlessly, into the vein and he drew a slow sip of her blood. Immediately that singing rapture started.

"You're mine," he said, his voice low and intense. "After all this time, you're _mine_, Buffy. Forever."

"I'm yours," she agreed with love and kissed him, tasting her own blood on his tongue, then slid her mouth down his neck to the junction between his neck and his shoulder. "Here?"

"Yes," he said on a shudder of breath.

Their hands folded together on the pillow on either side of her head, fingers interlinking tightly. She bit as hard as she could with her blunt human teeth, licked at the shallow seep of blood that welled up, swallowed.

"Mine," she said.

"Always. I've always been yours, Buffy."

Something caught them up and wove them together. A rapture far beyond even that ecstasy that came when he took her blood. He moved urgently, filling her with one hard thrust. She looked into the eyes blazing down at her and it was as if she could see all of him, all the steps that had brought him to this point. That long history of his, with its shining moments and its dark ones, its beauty and its blood-splattered ugliness. She accepted all of that as she accepted him.

Because she could see, _feel _the rest. The love and joy, yearning and tenderness, passion and hidden goodwill that was in him, that was his heart. What she was seeing, feeling, was his soul.

Merging with her own, just as their bodies were merging. An ultimate joining, mind and body and heart sieving into each other, interlinking as tightly and sweetly as their hands were joined, their essences transmuting, their two selves melding into one, inextricably interlocked.

"God, Spike!" she gasped in exaltation, drowning in unbelievably exquisite sensation.

"Yes," he said.. She could feel his joy.

They moved together, surging against each other, completing each other, two halves of one whole, like that yin-yang symbol she had thought of before. Both so sensitized by now that every touch, every rock of their hips was an agonizing rapture.

The crisis rolled over them like a tsunami. She felt him pulse within her; stars filled the blackness behind her closed eyelids; they were one being, body and soul, never to be parted.

"You'll never be able to hide from me now," she murmured, holding him tightly as they lay gasping in each other's arms.

"Why would I want to? I've been seeking you for a hundred and fifty years."

"Step out of the shadows, Spike. You don't belong in them anymore. Join me in the light. That's where we both belong."

"Yes," he said and kissed her. "Forever."

**The End**

* * *

><p><em>And this really is the end, because that's the last of my completed Spuffy stories. I had planned to write more and possibly I might still have the time to do so, but I can't be sure of that.<em>

_I've just signed a contract with the epublisher, Ellora's Cave! (Yay! See me, jumping up and down, screaming like a lunatic :D ) They're the largest of the epublishers who do erotic paranormals and they pretty well created the genre - _sex, action and romance all mixed together_, like the Spuffy I enjoy writing. I'll be doing a series about my Shifters from 'Running Wild' except in our world, under the name Jo Andrews. The first one will be called 'Driving Force' and when it's issued, I'll announce it here and on Live Journal (the name there is adreamweaver). In the meantime, I'll be busy working on the next in the series._

_I want to thank everyone for being so helpful and supportive! You guys are great!  
><em>


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